Google’s Climate Change Ambitions and What It Means for Customers | C2C Community

Google’s Climate Change Ambitions and What It Means for Customers

Categories: Google Cloud News Sustainability
Google’s Climate Change Ambitions and What It Means for Customers

This article was originally published on October 19.

In mid-September 2020, Google CEO Sundar Pichai made a special announcement: He laid out the company’s numerous past accomplishments and an ambitious to-do list over the next 10 years. 

This wasn’t about cloud-computing strategy, quarterly results, or new product development, however. Pichai was, in fact, talking about taking action on climate change. 

The science is clear: The world must act now if we’re going to avert the worst consequences of climate change,” he stated. “We are committed to doing our part.”

You can read more about Google’s accomplishments and goals for the future, which Pichai explains in a blog post and video, but the net-net is this: The elimination of Google’s carbon legacy, and details on how the company is going to operate on carbon-free energy by 2030.

“This is our biggest sustainability moonshot yet, with enormous practical and technical complexity,” Pichai stated. “We are the first major company that's set out to do this, and we aim to be the first to achieve it.”

What Does This Mean for Customers?

Whether you’re running your SAP workloads on Google Cloud, using Workspace (formerly G Suite) to get your job done, or plotting your next jog via Google Maps, you’re running on the carbon-free infrastructure that Pichai noted during his announcement. 

But there’s a lot more to the topic, and plenty of questions have bubbled up. C2C, in fact, has captured numerous questions from customers during previous events we’ve hosted about what the Google climate-action announcement means for them, including:

  • Do you think in the future the price for computing resources will be dictated by availability of green power sources, like wind? 
  • Does Google plan to share the best practices from the DC power efficiency project with customers and partners?
  • Can you talk about whether there are concerns about the energy consumption of AI development and processing? And what research is being done to lessen the energy consumption?

C2C is excited to announce an opportunity to hear from and ask questions of Hamidou Dia, vice president and global head of solutions engineering for Google Cloud, about building a carbon-free future. 

The conversation with Dia will take place on Thursday, Oct. 29, at 11 a.m. ET. You can register here and also submit your question for him in advance of the session.

The stakes couldn’t be higher for every single one of us, and for its part, Google is offering a blueprint for others to follow. 

 

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