Last year we announced Google’s third decade of climate action and set an ambitious moonshot goal to operate on 24/7 carbon-free energy by 2030. This means that every hour of every day, our data centers and campuses will use clean energy that doesn’t emit any carbon.
We’re already hard at work and as of 2020 we are operating at over 67% carbon-free energy across our data centers, up from 61% in 2019. We’re investing in new technologies like advanced geothermal and dragonscale solar to reduce emissions at our data centers and campuses, and are beginning to demonstrate that it’s possible to operate truly carbon free.
Beyond Google, a grid powered by clean energy will reduce a major source of greenhouse gas emissions and unleash sustainable innovation in other parts of our economy, like electrification of the transportation sector. This is good for the planet, good for business, and good for American competitiveness.
Corporate commitments for carbon-free energy are helping scale up clean energy across America, and we’re seeing hundreds of companies take action. In fact, we’ve encouraged the U.S. government to adopt a 24/7 carbon-free energy goal for federal facilities and helped launch a 24/7 Carbon-free Energy Compact with SE4ALL and UN Energy.
But for us and other companies to realize this future, we need to galvanize investment and modernization of our energy infrastructure. It’s for this reason that we have supported strong climate policies like clean energy standards and renewable energy tax incentives, which have helped enable clean electricity generation to grow dramatically in dozens of states.
And it’s why we support the clean energy and climate provisions in the bipartisan infrastructure and budget reconciliation packages. These provisions provide the funding and supportive regulatory climate to promote important investments in clean energy that help the U.S. move toward a cleaner and greener energy system, putting the vision of carbon-free operations within reach.
This is a pivotal moment. Strong, comprehensive climate and clean energy policy can help lead the way to 24/7 carbon-free grids and to the transition to a 1.5°C world. The moment is now.
