Google announces new sustainability pledge

“The world must act now if we’re going to avert the worst consequences of climate change.” 

Google has announced a new sustainability pledge that will create a “carbon-free future for everyone,” as reported in the Everett Post.

In a blog post , CEO Sundar Pichai says “The science is clear: The world must act now if we’re going to avert the worst consequences of climate change.” 

Four pledge points:

• Google has eliminated its carbon emissions from the founding of the company through 2007 by purchasing carbon off-sets, which are bought and can fund projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions around the world. 
• Google says it will become the first company to run completely on carbon-free energy across all of its operations worldwide by 2030. Pichai writes this is the company’s biggest sustainable moonshot to date. 
• Google will “enable 5 Gigawatts of new carbon-free energy across its key manufacturing regions by 2030 through investment.” This is expected to lead to $5 billion dollars in clean energy investments and take the equivalent of 1 million cars off the road each year, while also creating 8,000 clean energy jobs across the world. 
• The company will help 500 cities worldwide reduce emissions by 1 gigaton by 2025. How? By using Google’s Environmental Insights Explorer platform, which shows the estimated building emissions inside city boundaries, the estimated transportation emissions from trips that start or end in a city, and the estimated rooftop solar potential of all buildings in a city. 

Google is the latest company to announce a sustainability pledge this year. In January, Pepsi announced they would use 100 percent renewable energy in the US, and in February Microsoft announced a goal to become carbon negative by 2050.