Google's Green Growth: Search Engine Has Renewables In Their Tank

Google is absolutely not planning to hit the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button in regards to hoping the world's environmental problems will turn out alright.  The company has announced that they will triple their purchase of clean energy over the next ten years.

It takes a lot of fuel to answer all the world's questions.
(Image courtesy solarenergycanada.com.)

According to Greentech Leads, the sultans of search have pledged that their power-sources will focus heavily on sustainables and renewables in the coming years.  While the company claims to have been carbon-neutral since 2007, they have also invested over $2 billion in alternative energy pursuits, including the largest wind farm in America, and the largest solar farm in Africa.

In a press release, Google stated that, “We’re serious about environmental sustainability not because it’s trendy, but because it is core to our values and also makes good business sense...After all, the cheapest energy is the energy you don’t use in the first place. And in many places clean power is cost-competitive with conventional power.”

...And sometimes cooler-looking than conventional power.
(Image courtesy inhabitat.com.)

The company has also involved themselves in larger-scale awareness campaigns for sustainable power, citing a need to bring policy into the technology so that other nations, businesses, and individuals can also join the clean-energy coalition.

“Laws and policies meant to enable such investment should be designed for the long term and rooted in what science tells us needs to be done,” the release continued. “It’s imperative that policymakers reach a deal that moves us toward a zero-carbon economy. That’s the kind of future we’re committed to helping build, and that future generations deserve.”

We need to sustain the future generations, at least long enough until their art improves.
(Image courtesy ecofriendlylink.com.)

Efficiency is also a key element of the operation.  Google claims that they are able to derive 3.5 times the amount of computing power from the same amount of electricity they were using five years ago.  And that doesn't necessarily mean tearing down everything from the past.  In a recently-purchased former coal-fired power plant that Google intends to turn into a data center, they are in the process of converting the existing electrical infrastructure to support sustainable power.  Other former industrial sites are poised to follow.

So search easy, friends.  Know that the Internet's version of a Grecian oracle is not burning through non-renewable resources just to bring you your precious cat videos and pug pictures. It's nice to see that different but excellent elements of current technology can work together so well for the future.

Search all you want, it's not bad for the environment!
(Image courtesy ilovepugs.tumblr.com.)