Searching by Google may consume more energy than you think – and the grand company in Silicon Valley is increasing investment in clean energy. Until now, Google has spent over one billion US dollars to build solar, wind and other alternative energies to power its operations around the world.
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| Google Mountain View Campus garden (Source: Wikipedia) |
The most famous companies in Silicon Valley like Apple, Facebook and Microsoft are all gigantic consumers of energy, and Google is not the exception. Although most of them spend lots of money developing solutions to alternative energy, Google is the most aggressive one and has invested in several wind and solar projects.
"We've invested over a billion dollars in 15 projects that have the capacity to produce 2GW of power around the world, mostly in the U.S., but that's the equivalent of Hoover's Dam worth of power generation," said Rick Needham, Google's director of energy and sustainability.
In last quarter only, Google spent US $2.25 billion on data centers and related infrastructure. To achieve the purpose of generating sufficient energy to run the company, Google has invested in several wind/solar farms which power about 34% of Google’s operations. One of Google’s largest solar investments is located in Ivanpah, California, a project with 347,000 sun-facing mirrors to produce around 390 MW of electricity. As these top technology companies are all solution-seekers, their attempts to produce power through cleaner methods shall also be a representation of their consciousness toward the energy issue.
Generating energy instead of only purchasing from power plants does reveal the companies’ business senses. At least, it is a message of a company’s environmental sense -- a sense that has already been recognized as a positive description. Google’s ambition is to power 100% of its operations through renewable energy, even there is still a long road to travel. Since Google is showing its target by investing more clean energy projects around the world, just wait and see.
Source: CNBC
