Is Google’s Renewable Energy Plan What It Seems?

Electronic Design ^ | 18 January 2017 | Maria Guerra

[Lorianne]

When I first heard about Google’s latest announcement, I thought the company was going to rely completely on renewable energy to directly energize its data centers. I was surprised by such an achievement, as data centers operate 24/7 and wind and the sun are not constantly available resources. But it turned out that is not the case—yet. Google’s renewable energy plan is just an excuse for all the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that it will keep generating as it mostly energizes its data centers with fossil fuels. In addition to delving into the significance of this announcement ourselves, we asked some experts to weigh in on this trend and the reasons that data-center owners are making these moves.

To provide some background, owners of big data centers like Google had started to rely progressively on renewable sources because data centers require such significant amounts of energy. In 2015, Google consumed 5.7 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity, which is nearly as much electricity as the city of San Francisco used in the same year. Google’s long-term goal is to run on clean, zero-carbon energy full-time, every day of the year. To achieve the 100% renewable energy purchasing goal, Google is currently participating in a number of large-scale deals with renewable producers and partnerships with utility providers such as: •A “direct” renewable purchase in competitive retail markets in areas with deregulated wholesale and retail power markets

•A fixed-floating swap approach, whereby Google buys fixed-price renewables directly from a wind or solar farm and then resells it into the wholesale market at a floating market rate, retiring the associate renewable energy certificates (RECs). It then sells the power back into the same grid from which we later draw power at the consumer level.