Google Green Blog

In the limelight: Biking towards a better environment

2013-05-07T16:14:00.000-07:00

"In the limelight" is a monthly series showcasing the ways people are using Google products to be better to the environment. Explore ways you can be greener with help from Google products on the Google Green website.

May is National Bike Month, an opportunity to celebrate the bicycle and its many benefits. All month long, Bike to Work Day activities are taking place in cities across the country. Whether you’re an avid cyclist or a casual cruiser, biking can save you money, improve your health and help you explore your community. As an added benefit, biking is better for our environment, too.

One way to discover bike routes in your community is Google Maps biking directions, which currently provides biking directions and bike routes in over 200 US cities, Canada, Australia, and 14 European countries. You can use Google Maps to plan your route for Bike to Work Day (or any day).

Today, we’re sitting down with Todd Scott, the Detroit Greenways Coordinator, who made cycling easier for his community. Using Google Map Maker, he’s built a comprehensive, accurate and accessible map of biking directions and routes in and around Detroit. Todd is helping build community and preserve the environment in an effort to transform the Motor City into “Cycle City.”

Detroit is the birthplace of the automotive revolution. What is the connection to bicycling? Active bicycling clubs began forming in Detroit in the 1890s, preceding the automotive revolution. These early bicyclists became the entrepreneurs, industrialists, race car drivers, salesman, and mechanics that led to Detroit becoming the Motor City. In many ways, we're getting back to cycling -- and for many reasons: improved health, being green, saving money, being social, and just having fun.

How did you come up with the idea to use Google Map Maker? I was at the 2010 National Bike Summit when Google first launched bicycling directions. I realized that in order for them to work well, we needed reliable map data that made it easy for people to discover bicycle friendly roads and trails. Google Map Maker lets me do that.

What do you consider the key benefit of promoting cycling in your city? There are so many benefits to cycling in Detroit that it's tough to choose just one. However, I hear from residents and visitors alike that they see a different Detroit on a bike than they do in a car. A ride from the abandoned Michigan Central Station to the Ford Rouge Plant is pretty amazing. This takes you through the heart of Southwest Detroit with many great restaurants, bakeries, murals, parks, etc. On a bike, it's so much easier to stop and appreciate the sights, sounds, and smells of these neighborhoods.

What are other ways in which your city supports cycling? The city of Detroit has lost nearly two-thirds of its population over the last half-century. That means our roads have very little vehicle traffic and are very bike friendly. Still, we’re focused on adding more trails and bike lanes in the city. This year we're adding 100 miles of bike lanes and expanding some of the city's most popular trails.

What does being green mean to you? For me it's core to my decision making process. I do try to bike and walk to work, the grocery store, the bank, and other local businesses. Sometimes this lifestyle is trumped by other factors. I do turn up the thermostat in the winter when my girlfriend visits.

You can find local bike trails and routes using Google Maps biking directions and start enjoying a healthier, greener lifestyle today!

Posted by Jeff Eisenberg, Google Green

Following the lead of nature’s engineers

2013-04-22T09:03:00.000-07:00

It’s no surprise that Google appreciates engineers. And this Earth Day, we’re looking at some of our favorite engineers from nature to see how they can teach us to treat the environment better. We’ve created a website where we can see the beauty and ingenuity of the natural world through photos from National Geographic. We also want to provide easy ways to be greener in our own lives, so this site shows us how we can all be like those organisms by taking simple actions to care for the environment.

For instance, until recently I’d never heard of a remora. Turns out that these fish latch on to other ocean creatures such as whales and turtles to catch rides. In a way, these fish are using their own form of mass transit. To be like the remora and travel with a lighter footprint, we can plan trips using rapid transit. Or we can be inspired by bears—the true experts on “sleep mode”—to save energy in our own lives by adjusting our home thermostat and using energy efficient appliances.

Our doodle today also acknowledges the interconnections of the natural world. You can interact with elements of the environment to affect the seasons, weather and wildlife.

As another way to move from awareness to action, we’re hosting a Google+ Hangout On Air series focused on pressing environmental issues. We’ll kick it off today at 12pm ET with a Hangout on Air connecting NASA (live from Greenland), National Geographic explorers from around the world, and Underwater Earth (live from the Great Barrier reef). Throughout the week, we’ll hold daily Hangouts on Air covering topics such as clean water and animal conservation.

This Earth Day and every day, let’s take a moment to marvel at the wonder of nature and do our part to protect the natural ecosystem we all depend on. A salute to nature’s engineers!

Posted by Erin Reilly, Google Green team

Expanding options for companies to buy renewable energy

2013-04-19T08:30:00.000-07:00

We’re always looking for ways to expand the use of renewable energy. To date we’ve committed more than $1 billion to renewable energy project investments, signed agreements to procure wind power near our data centers, and installed solar panels at our corporate headquarters.

It’s also important to work directly with our utility partners to find solutions that will make more renewable energy available for us and for others. The most straightforward way to do this is for utilities to offer a renewable power option for companies that request it—something that’s not currently offered by most utilities. We’ve just published a white paper laying out our thoughts on how and why such programs might work.

We’re also announcing our first effort to put this idea into practice. We’re expanding our Lenoir, NC data center, and our local electricity provider, Duke Energy, has pledged to develop a new program for large companies like Google who want to buy renewable power for their operations. Duke will file the plan with their state commission within 90 days.

Our data center in Lenoir, NC.

Offering companies like Google a renewable energy option has many advantages. Because the service is made available to a wide range of customers, companies that don’t have the ability or resources to pursue alternative approaches can participate. And by tapping utilities’ strengths in power generation and delivery, it makes it easier for companies to buy renewable energy on a larger scale. Of course, the approach is not without its challenges: utilities will need to work out the mechanics of the service within their local regulatory structure, and in many cases state utility commissions will need to approve the programs. There’s also the challenge of finding cost-effective renewable projects.

We'll continue to find creative ways to supply our facilities with renewable energy, but we think this solution can provide an important new way to increase the use of renewable energy nationwide. We look forward to working with utilities, state utility commissions, companies and other stakeholders to make it a reality.

Posted by Gary Demasi, Director, Global Infrastructure

Keeping our data centers green and our employees safe

2013-04-09T12:15:00.000-07:00

The Internet is a virtual place for most people, but data centers -- the large industrial warehouses filled with servers that power the web -- are anything but. We want our data centers to be both environmentally sustainable and safe places to work, so we make sure that that they meet the highest standards of environmental management and workforce safety. Our three owned-and-operated data centers in Europe - located in Belgium, Finland and Ireland - have now joined our U.S. facilities in receiving ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001 certification.

In order to receive these certifications, you need to say what you’re going to do, then do what you say — and then keep improving. The ISO and OHSAS standards dictate what key elements are required, but it’s up to us to figure out how to follow through. So we’ve developed a comprehensive system of procedures and improvements that our data center teams follow every day. Each of our data centers is different, so many of the improvements we’ve implemented are specific to local needs.

In Belgium, we use an evaporative cooling system that’s well-suited to the temperate climate. After cooling the servers, water runs through large cooling towers, where much of it is released as water vapor. This process is very energy efficient, but keeping the cooling towers clean and clear of outdoor dust is a time-consuming process. So the team tried a simple fix: they attached screens to the outsides of the towers, which allow air to flow freely but cut down significantly on the amount of build-up. This worked so well that our other data centers have begun to install screens as well.

Screens keep outdoor dust from entering these cooling towers.

In Ireland, we’ve found a way to use excess heat coming out of the server rooms to heat our office space. Hot air that would normally be sent outside through our cooling infrastructure is instead drawn over an air-to-air heat exchanger, where it is used to heat up incoming fresh air for the office area. This eliminates our need for gas heaters in the facility, and, like in Belgium, it’s working so well that we’re considering implementing it at other facilities.

In Finland, where we cool the data center with seawater, we want to bring the temperature down before sending the water back into the Gulf. So we built a “tempering hut,” where we manually mix the outgoing warm water with fresh cold water. We’re constantly tweaking the temperature and amount of the cold water to reach the optimal temperature, and we track that data as part of our ongoing efforts to monitor and improve our operations.

The tempering hut, the small building on the far left, is where we cool water down before returning it to the Gulf of Finland.

We want to lead the industry in environmental management and workplace safety, and we’re proud to be the first major Internet services company to achieve these certifications across their entire U.S. and European fleet.

Posted by Joe Kava, VP, Data Centers

10 Shades of Google Green

2013-03-21T09:47:00.000-07:00

As a member of the Google Green team, I enjoy working at a company that’s committed to minimizing our environmental impact and supporting sustainability around the globe. As part of these efforts, I’m pleased to share that our Google Green and Data Center websites are now available in 10 languages (listed below).

Personally, it was really interesting to see the sites in languages other than the English versions we use everyday (see some screenshots below). And it’s been particularly fun to learn to say “data center” in German (“Rechenzentren”) and Finnish (“Palvelinkeskukset”).

We invite you to explore these sites and share them with others committed to a cleaner, more sustainable future.

Our sites are now available in the following languages: French (Google Green, Data Center), Italian (Google Green, Data Center), German (Google Green, Data Center), Dutch (Google Green, Data Center), Finnish (Google Green, Data Center), Spanish (Google Green, Data Center), Latin American Spanish (Google Green, Data Center), Brazilian Portuguese (Google Green, Data Center), Traditional Chinese (Google Green, Data Center), Japanese (Google Green), English (Green, Data Center)

Posted by Jeff Eisenberg, Google Green

In the limelight: A healthy, green spin on comfort food

2013-03-14T10:00:00.000-07:00

"In the limelight" is a monthly series showcasing the ways people are using Google products to be better to the environment. Explore ways you can be greener with help from Google products on the Google Green site.

These days, you can learn how to do almost anything on YouTube. From everyday tips on composting to more off-the-wall tutorials like how to solar power your next grilled cheese sandwich, you can find a wealth of videos that showcase ways you can be better to the environment. Today, we're sitting down with Cobi Kim of Veggietorials—a YouTube channel focused on healthy, meatless twists on classic comfort food dishes.

What was the inspiration behind creating "Veggietorials"?

I created Veggietorials to share my love of delicious and beautiful plant-based food. I want to give people a comfortable entry-point to learn, discover, and explore how delicious and easy veggie cooking can be.

How do you come up with ideas for your videos?

I find inspiration in so many different places. Sometimes I want to recreate a dish I’ve enjoyed while traveling. Other times, I'll see a friend post photos of an incredible meal that I want to try. My videos show you how to put a vegan twist on everything from decadent sticky buns to homestyle meatloaf. I live in Hawaii, so my dishes often have a local flair. Most of the time, I make videos about local comfort food dishes that I want to celebrate, like the hearty Loco Moco. That's a popular Hawaiian plate lunch usually made with two scoops of rice, a burger patty, and a generous pour of brown gravy—all topped with a fried egg.

Who watches your videos? Are most of your followers vegan and vegetarian?

Not necessarily! Many of my viewers are omnivores who are interested in trying something new. It’s such an exciting time to try meatless recipes because there are so many choices. I remember when vegetarian options were limited to tofu, salads, nuts, and seeds. Now, there are alternatives to almost any animal product or ingredient you would ever want to use. Contrary to popular belief, you don't need to change your entire palette if you decide to go vegan or vegetarian. You can continue to make the foods you've always loved.

How do you connect with your audience?

I reply to every single comment that I receive. I'm thrilled when people share photos of their version of a dish I've featured in a video. That's my favorite part of building this channel. And I create at least one viewer-inspired video each month, based on a specific request, a particular dietary need, or a fresh idea.

Lastly, what does being green mean to you?

In my world, being green means growing my own organic food to stay connected to the source, buying locally, and supporting environmentally conscious companies. These are just some of the ways we can tread more lightly on our planet.

You can find more creative recipes on the Veggietorials YouTube channel and plenty of green how-to videos on YouTube. Happy viewing!

Make a map that will change the world with Google Earth Outreach Developer Grants

2013-03-13T10:00:00.000-07:00

(Cross-posted from the Google Lat Long Blog)

For the third year, I’m excited to announce the call for 2013 Google Earth Outreach Developer Grants applications is now open. Google Earth Outreach Developer Grants provide funding to nonprofit organizations ranging between $10,000 and $20,000 on average to build a map that will help them accomplish their mission, be it around environmental issues, humanitarian causes, disaster relief prevention, or health issues. If your nonprofit has a great idea for a map that can change the world, apply for a 2013 Google Earth Outreach Developer Grant today.

This year, we checked in with our 2011 Developer Grantees to learn about the impact their maps had on each nonprofit’s overall mission one year after the launch of the map. We were proud of the many achievements of the nonprofits’ work. Here are some of my favorite examples:

WWF & Eyes on the Forest mapped deforestation rates and wildlife habitat in Sumatra.

WWF & Eyes on the Forest created a map to showcase deforestation in Sumatra. With the Google Maps Engine map as part of their “Don’t Flush Tiger Forests” campaign, they convinced 17 out of 20 US retailers to stop buying toilet paper from companies cutting down intact hardwood rainforests and critical tiger habitat in Sumatra.

The HALO Trust mapped their minefield clearance work in a Google Earth Tour

The HALO Trust clears minefields in previously war-torn regions around the world, including Angola, Afghanistan and Cambodia. Upon the launch of their Google Earth tours designed to raise awareness about their work, they saw the most traffic to their website over the entire calendar year.

iNaturalist taps into citizen scientists who submit research-grade species observations to a global map using Android devices and iPhones

iNaturalist.org’s Android app, designed to collect species observations from around the world from citizen scientists, has been installed on over 2000 Android devices. The number of scientific-grade research observations has more than quadrupled. We look forward to hearing about the impacts of our 2012 Developer Grantees’ maps as they are launched in coming months. Good luck to nonprofits who apply to our 2013 Google Earth Outreach Developer Grants, and if you are a nonprofit with a great idea for a map, apply for a grant!

Posted by Tanya Birch, Google Earth Outreach

A proud partner in the Workplace Charging Challenge

2013-01-31T11:40:00.000-08:00

At Google, we believe that plug-in vehicles are game-changers in the effort to reduce the carbon footprint of transportation, improve air quality, and increase the adoption of intermittent renewable energy sources. That’s why we’re excited to join the U.S. Department of Energy’s Workplace Charging Challenge, an initiative to increase the number of employers offering workplace charging by tenfold in five years.

Google has been dedicated to the promise of electric vehicles since 2007, when we outfitted a small fleet of Priuses and Escape Hybrids with homegrown dataloggers and installed an EV solar carport at our HQ in Mountain View. Our employees eagerly adopted the new technology, and we soon launched a corporate carshare program, called GFleet. GFleet provides Googlers with a low-carbon transportation option once they get to the office using alternative transportation (for instance, the Google shuttle, walking, biking, or carpooling). To date Googlers have driven GFleet vehicles over a quarter of a million miles.

To support GFleet and encourage Googlers to buy their own plug-ins, Google offers free on campus charging in Mountain View and eight additional office locations in the U.S. Now with more than 300 stations across the country, we’ve built the largest corporate charging infrastructure in the country.

We’re delighted to help drive progress in this space, and invite others to join the charge towards more EV infrastructure, cleaner air, and a sustainable future.

Posted by Rolf Schreiber, Technical Program Manager, Electric Transportation

Paving a path to intelligent energy use

2013-01-14T06:30:00.000-08:00

One of the best parts about working at Google is the chance to use the Internet and digital technology to help us all manage energy better. We’ve seen big changes in recent years to the way we watch TV, use phones, read and listen to music, yet how we use electricity hasn’t changed much in decades.

What if instead of a monthly bill we had access to more real-time and actionable information about our electricity consumption? What if our appliances, air conditioners, and lights adjusted automatically to use energy more efficiently and save money? If we did this in every home it would help improve the reliability of the grid and save billions of dollars.

Technology like smart meters and programmable thermostats make it possible to do this today. The challenge is that the rules governing electricity distribution were written for last century’s grid. That’s why Google.org is giving a $2.65M grant to the Energy Foundation to support policy reforms that will lead to more intelligent energy use. The effort will focus on three fundamental areas:

Smarter electricity rates that encourage consumers to be more efficient, shift their electricity use to times when it’s cheaper and produce their own on-site energy;

Access to electricity markets for consumers and other businesses so they can be compensated for cutting energy use at key times; and

Open data policies that give customers access to their own energy data, which they can use or share with third parties they select, promoting better energy management tools and services.

These policy reforms, coupled with the new technologies now being deployed on a large scale, can empower consumers to make smarter energy choices, improve real-time management of the electricity grid, and help facilitate more renewable energy all while lowering overall costs.

We hope this grant will help catalyze change and look forward to seeing progress in the years to come.

Posted by Michael Terrell, Senior Policy Counsel, Energy & Sustainability

A wind investment deep in the heart of Texas

2013-01-09T16:16:00.001-08:00

(Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog)

In late December, while most of us were busy wrapping presents, our Treasury team was tying a bow on our most recent renewable energy deal: an approximately $200 million equity investment in a wind farm in west Texas that generates enough energy to power more than 60,000 average U.S. homes.

Spinning Spur Wind Project is located in Oldham County, a wide open, windy section of the Texas Panhandle located about 35 miles from Amarillo. The 161 megawatt facility was built by renewable energy developer EDF Renewable Energy, a veteran in the industry that has overseen more than 50 other clean energy projects. Spinning Spur’s 70 2.3 MW Siemens turbines started spinning full time just before the end of the year, and the energy they create has been contracted to SPS, a utility that primarily serves Texas and New Mexico.

We look for projects like Spinning Spur because, in addition to creating more renewable energy and strengthening the local economy, they also make for smart investments: they offer attractive returns relative to the risks and allow us to invest in a broad range of assets. We’re also proud to be the first investor in an EDF Renewable Energy project that is not a financial institution, as we believe that corporations can be an important new source of capital for the renewable energy sector.

Spinning Spur joins 10 other renewable energy investments we’ve made since 2010, several of which hit significant milestones in the past year:

The Atlantic Wind Connection received permission to begin permitting, an important step in advancing the construction of the United States’ first offshore backbone electric transmission system (more in this new video).
Shepherds Flat, one of the world’s largest wind farms with a capacity of 845 MW, became fully operational in October.
The Ivanpah project, which is more than 75 percent complete and employs 2,000+ people, recently installed its 100,000th heliostat, a kind of mirror (more in this new video).
Just yesterday (PDF), the fourth and final phase of Recurrent Energy's 88MW solar installation in Sacramento County, Calif., reached commercial operation.

Altogether, the renewable energy projects we’ve invested in are capable of generating 2 gigawatts of power. To give a better sense of what that really means, we came up with some comparisons (click to enlarge):

Here’s to a clean, renewable 2013!

Posted by Kojo Ako-Asare, Senior Manager, Corporate Finance

An energetic welcome to Arun Majumdar

2012-12-17T10:01:00.002-08:00

One of the world’s biggest challenges is bringing reliable, sustainable and affordable energy to everyone. We need a new energy blueprint for the future—the latest advances in technology have the potential to bring us closer to that goal than ever before.

That’s why I’m pleased to welcome Dr. Arun Majumdar to Google, where he will drive Google.org’s energy initiatives and advise the company on our broader energy strategy. Arun is widely recognized as one of the foremost leaders in energy innovation. He joins us from the Department of Energy, where he served as Acting Undersecretary of Energy and was founding Director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency—Energy (better known as ARPA-E), identifying and providing essential support for the development of transformational new energy technologies. In his roles at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California at Berkeley, he made great contributions in the areas of energy conversion, transport, and storage, and in 2005 was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering.

We’re looking forward to great things in the coming year with Arun’s leadership and experience on the team.

Posted by Matthew Stepka, VP, Google.org

Growing green communities on Google+

2012-12-14T10:00:00.000-08:00

All around Google+, people are gathering together to talk about things that matter to them, including the environment. Since we launched Google+ Communities a week ago, it's been great to see how quickly green communities have sprouted up.

With Google+ communities, you can:

Join public communities on everything from vegetarian cooking to backyard farming

Create private communities like a bike-to-work group among your coworkers or a freecycling group among your friends

Browse discussion categories to find the conversations you care about most (like whether the future of renewable energy lies in solar or wind)

Start hangouts and plan events with community members

Some of our favorite green communities on Google+ so far:

Because shared information can help people make greener choices, and because lively online discussions can inspire real-life action, we're excited about this new feature. Explore different communities on Google+ and see what people are doing to create more green in the world—this holiday season and through the new year.

Posted by Therese Wong, Google Green team

Getting the heat out: A look at evaporative cooling

2012-11-19T14:00:00.000-08:00

When our data centers are answering your search queries and streaming YouTube videos, they’re generating heat. We wrote about our hot hut infrastructure which pulls heat from our servers in an earlier blog post, but how do we efficiently get that heat out of the building?

Cooling towers, like those pictured below, expose water heated by the data center floor to the outside air. In the same way that perspiration removes heat from the human body, we use water evaporation to cool the water that runs through our data centers. This allows us to use the ‘free cooling’ provided by the local climate.

Rooftop cooling towers

We use two loops of water to remove heat from the data center floor and transfer it to our cooling towers. Red (hot) and blue (cold) pipes carry water to and from the data center floor. Yellow (hot) and green (cold) pipes carry water to and from the cooling towers on the roof. The photo below shows our heat exchangers, where these two loops of water meet. The colorful pipes aren’t just for decoration, they designate the hot and cold water traveling in each of the loops. It is a happy coincidence that our company colors worked so well for labeling our water pipes.

Heat exchanger room

In some sites with hot summer climates, we have backup chillers on hand (the double-barreled green units on the left side of the photo)—just in case the temperature or humidity gets too hot to rely on our cooling towers. We only use these when absolutely necessary, since they’re not as efficient as using outside air for cooling.

We aim to use as little energy as possible to power our products, and our cooling towers are a critical part of this effort. Learn more about how we cool our data centers on our Data center site.

Posted by Joe Kava, Vice President, Data Center Operations

Investing in green energy in Greene County, Iowa

2012-11-15T08:07:00.000-08:00

(Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog)

If you drive northwest from Des Moines, Iowa, you’ll see a lot of corn fields. From time to time, you’ll also see wind turbines rising out of those fields, making efficient use of our natural resources to produce renewable energy. It’s places like these that are home to a vibrant, emerging clean energy economy.

Today we‘re announcing that we’ve made an equity investment of $75 million in a 50MW wind farm in Rippey, a small town in Greene County, about an hour outside of Des Moines. The Rippey project, developed by RPM Access, is expected to produce enough energy to power over 15,000 Iowa homes. The project, which is now in operation, uses turbines produced by Nordex USA at their Jonesboro, Ark. facility.

Investment team members Nick Coons and Steffi Russell-Egbert visiting the Rippey project on a (windy) day in October.

We’ve taken two approaches to greening the grid in Iowa, a state where we operate a data center. Back in 2010, we entered into a long-term contract to purchase wind energy from NextEra Energy Resources’ Story County II wind farm. This time, we’re investing directly into a wind project, which has been contracted to sell all of the energy to the Central Iowa Power Cooperative, an Iowa-based utility that will deliver the energy to local consumers. We’re happy to help make more renewable energy available to Iowans and to support the growing wind energy industry in the state.

This project brings our committed investment to the renewable energy sector to more than $990 million. Read more about our previous investments on our Google Green site.

Posted by Axel Martinez, Assistant Treasurer, Head of Capital Markets

A healthy grant to support healthy buildings

2012-11-14T08:59:00.002-08:00

(Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog)

Imagine having nutrition-label-like data about every product you use at your fingertips—knowing exactly what ingredients make up things like office chairs or house paint and how they could impact your health today and 30 years from now. It’s a future that goes hand in hand with our commitment to creating the healthiest work environments possible and promoting transparency within the wide world of building materials.

Today, we’re taking a step toward that future with a $3 million grant to the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), a leading non-profit organization that works to create greener buildings and communities in the U.S. and around the world.

There’s a lack of clear and accessible information on building ingredients, which means that a lot of us might be exposed to potentially harmful and toxic chemicals in building materials—whether it’s in the desk you sit at every day or the building’s paints, tiles and carpeting. This grant is designed to improve human health and well-being by supporting more industry research and better standards around healthy materials.

We’ve already done a lot to eliminate many of these chemicals in our offices around the world, and we want to make it easier for others to do the same. The USGBC has had great success with their widely adopted LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) rating system for the design, construction and operation of green buildings. LEED is certifying 1.7 million square feet every day with 9.3 billion square feet participating in LEED across all 50 states and 138 countries. We think they’re in a great position to build on this track record to create real and lasting change in the industry.

But it isn't enough just to have better labeling or standards about the ingredients in various products. We also need to know more about the ingredients themselves, which is why this grant also supports more scientific research and outreach so we can all do a better job of understanding how building materials impact human health. By doing so, we hope to empower consumers and businesses alike to make more informed decisions about the materials they purchase and use in their day-to-day lives.

Posted by Lacy Caruthers, Sustainability Team

Cooling the cloud: A look inside Google’s Hot Huts

2012-10-23T13:45:00.001-07:00

If you’ve taken a look at our new site, Where the Internet lives, you’ve gotten an in-depth look at some of our infrastructure and the people who help keep Google up and running for you. Our data center infrastructure is the foundation for all Google services, powering our servers, networking equipment and cooling systems.

Our emphasis on cooling systems might come as a surprise, until you consider how warm a personal computer can become during use. Data centers, which house thousands of computers, need to stay within a specific operating temperature range. Even though we run our facilities hotter than a typical data center, we need cooling systems - both to prevent server breakdowns and to provide a reasonable working environment for technicians working on the data center floor.

After servers, the second largest consumer of power in a data center is the cooling system. We needed a cooling system which minimized our overall energy consumption. For this reason, we designed our own cooling systems from the ground up.

This photo shows several of our custom cooling systems arranged in a row with racks of servers pushed against them on both sides. We named these units “Hot Huts” because they are sealed from the rest of the data center floor. Sealing away the hot air increases cooling efficiency.

The interior of a hot hut row

The black circles along the walls in the photograph above are the exhaust fans on our server trays, and the hoses coming up from the floor contain water going to and from the cooling coils in the top of each unit. Fans on top of each Hot Hut pull hot air across these water-filled cooling coils. This cooled air leaving the Hot Hut returns to the ambient air in the data center, and machines can draw in this air again to cool themselves down, completing the cooling cycle.

Set of active racks pushed up against hot huts

We chose a water-based cooling system for our data centers since water can hold more heat than air. Water-based cooling means running pipes under the raised floors in our data centers. With so much electrical equipment in place, we take precautions with regular inspections and an alarm system which detects leaks. Here, a data center technician inspects underfloor water pipes which lead to a heat exchanger in the cooling plant.

Inspecting underfloor pipes

By providing this view into our data center operations, we hope to inspire other companies to rethink their approaches to data center cooling. Building our own cooling systems means we can keep our data centers cool using a fraction of the energy used by a typical data center chiller, and that translates to reliable, carbon neutral services you can use for free.

Posted by Joe Kava, Senior Director, Data Center Operations

Google’s data centers: an inside look

2012-10-17T04:34:00.001-07:00

(Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog)

Very few people have stepped inside Google’s data centers, and for good reason: our first priority is the privacy and security of your data, and we go to great lengths to protect it, keeping our sites under close guard. While we’ve shared many of our designs and best practices, and we’ve been publishing our efficiency data since 2008, only a small set of employees have access to the server floor itself.

Today, for the first time, you can see inside our data centers and pay them a virtual visit. On Where the Internet lives, our new site featuring beautiful photographs by Connie Zhou, you’ll get a never-before-seen look at the technology, the people and the places that keep Google running.

The server floor in Council Bluffs, Iowa

Night falls over our Lenoir, NC data center

In addition, you can now explore our Lenoir, NC data center at your own pace in Street View. Walk in the front door, head up the stairs, turn right at the ping-pong table and head down the hall to the data center floor. Or take a stroll around the exterior of the facility to see our energy-efficient cooling infrastructure. You can also watch a video tour to learn more about what you're viewing in Street View and see some of our equipment in action.

Finally, we invited author and WIRED reporter Steven Levy to talk to the architects of our infrastructure and get an unprecedented look at its inner workings. His new story is an exploration of the history and evolution of our infrastructure, with a first-time-ever report from the floor of a Google data center.

Fourteen years ago, back when Google was a student research project, Larry and Sergey powered their new search engine using a few cheap, off-the-shelf servers stacked in creative ways. We’ve grown a bit since then, and we hope you enjoy this glimpse at what we’ve built. In the coming days we’ll share a series of posts on the Google Green Blog that explore some of the photographs in more detail, so stay tuned for more! Posted by Urs Hölzle, Senior Vice President, Technical Infrastructure

More renewable energy for our data centers

2012-09-26T07:00:00.000-07:00

(Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog)

We announced our commitment to carbon neutrality back in 2007, and since then we’ve been finding ways to power our operations with as much renewable energy as possible. In our latest step toward this end, we just signed an agreement with the Grand River Dam Authority (GRDA) to green the energy supply to our Oklahoma data center with 48 MW of wind energy from the Canadian Hills Wind Project in Oklahoma, which is expected to come online later this year.

We’ve been working with GRDA, our local utility, to procure additional renewable energy since we “plugged in” our data center in 2011, and in February of 2012, GRDA approached us about purchasing power from Canadian Hills. In conjunction with the electricity GRDA already supplies Google to operate its data center, Google will pay GRDA a premium to purchase renewable energy generated by Canadian Hills. This brings the total amount of renewable energy for which Google has contracted to over 260 MW.

This agreement is a milestone for GRDA because it’s their first-ever wind energy project. It’s also a milestone for Google because it’s a little different from the previous Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) we’ve signed, where we agreed to buy the energy directly from the developer who built the wind farm. This agreement, by contrast, marks the first time we’ve partnered with a utility provider to increase the amount of renewable energy powering one of our data centers.

Although both options can make sense depending on the circumstances, we’re excited about this collaboration because it makes the most of our respective strengths: utilities like GRDA are best positioned to integrate renewable energy into their generation mix and to deliver power; we’re a growing company with a corporate mandate to use clean energy for our operations in a scalable way. We’ve been working closely with all of our utility partners to find ways to source renewables directly, and we look forward to working with other suppliers to deliver clean energy to our data centers.

Posted by Gary Demasi, Director, Global Infrastructure team

An update on our carbon footprint and sustainability efforts

2012-09-12T08:00:00.000-07:00

Last year we published Google’s 2010 carbon footprint data for the first time on our Google Green site, and today we’re updating the site with information about our 2011 footprint. We’re also thrilled to report that we’re featured in the Carbon Disclosure Project’s 2012 Carbon Disclosure Leadership Index for a second year.

As we grow our services, we’re doing so in a responsible way. The Internet continues to see explosive growth: we’ve found over 30 trillion unique URLs on the web, up from 1 trillion in 2008. Our servers index 20 billion pages a day, receive 100 billion search queries a month, and support 425 million Gmail users—among many other services. Because we’re carbon neutral, we do all that work with a carbon footprint of zero, minimizing our impact on climate change.

We like to be thorough, so when calculating our carbon footprint we go beyond the typical approach. We cover not only employee business travel, but also daily commuting. We track the miles driven by our self-driving cars and Street View vehicles. And when it comes to our data centers, we take a “kitchen sink” approach—that is, we throw just about everything in. We include data center construction and server manufacturing as well as the energy used by Google-built data centers, leased facilities (called “colos”) and other third-party facilities around the world that house Google equipment.

Our carbon footprint in 2011, before offsetting it, was 1,677,423 metric tons CO2e. As a normal result of continuing to provide more and better services to more users, our energy consumption in 2011 increased in absolute terms, but not in relative terms. In other words, it’s growing less quickly than our business. Our carbon footprint per million dollars of revenue—a measure of carbon intensity commonly used to track corporate sustainability—has decreased by an average of 10% each year since 2009.

Our data centers hit a new low this year—in a good way. The average power usage effectiveness (PUE) across our global fleet of data centers has dropped to our lowest (AKA best) yet: 1.13 (with some facilities dipping as low as 1.08 earlier this year). This means we’ve managed to reduce the amount of energy we use on cooling and other overhead to just 13%.

Our campus sustainability programs are thriving. Last year, our shuttle program saw a 60% increase in ridership, and Googlers drove our fleet of hybrid and electric vehicles over 220,000 miles. The combination of our employee shuttle system and our electric vehicle infrastructure takes the equivalent of about 3,000 cars off the road every year. And we’re proud to have over 6 million square feet of building space around the world set to achieve LEED certification.

We continue to look for and implement new ways to reduce our impact on the environment while we increase our impact on sustainability, green energy, and clean technologies. We look forward to reporting back next year on our latest numbers, innovations, and activities.

Posted by Rick Needham, Director, Energy and Sustainability

Charging ahead at the Googleplex

2012-07-31T08:00:00.001-07:00

We’re hosting a forum at our headquarters today on the future of workplace electric vehicle (EV) charging. Organized by CALSTART, a leading clean transportation technologies and fuels nonprofit, the conference will explore the opportunities and challenges of developing electric vehicle technology and infrastructure.

Since 2007, we’ve been helping develop green transportation at Google and beyond. With our RechargeIt initiative, we created a mini-fleet of plug-in hybrids and demonstrated EV technology. Just last year, we announced a major expansion of our own EV charging infrastructure, and transitioned Gfleet, our car-sharing program for Googlers, to an all plug-in fleet. And since then, we’ve more than tripled the number of faster level 2 electric vehicle chargers to over 240 today, and have doubled Gfleet to 52 plug-in vehicles. With the largest corporate charging infrastructure in the US, we’re getting closer to our goal of electrifying 5% of our parking spaces at the Googleplex!

Along with our biodiesel shuttle program, which transports about 4,500 Googlers to campus and back home every day, our programs reduce the stress of commuting for employees and the need to build expensive parking. The net environmental savings are like taking 3,000 cars off the road.

We think green transportation is great for the environment and for business. But the world needs to continue expanding the infrastructure necessary to support clean transportation, and there are still challenges ahead. At today’s forum, leaders from government, the transportation industry, and other companies will discuss these important issues -- from incentives for building owners and employees, to the impact of EV’s on the electricity grid. We’re excited by the possibilities, and hope the development and deployment of EV technology continues to accelerate.

Posted by Rolf Schreiber, Technical Program Manager, Electric Transportation

Geo in Rio: Cool Tools for a Warming Planet

2012-06-26T14:27:00.000-07:00

(Last week we published a series of blog posts on the Google Green Blog about our activities at Rio+20, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development. This is our final post in the series - thanks for reading along!)

The week we spent at Rio+20 incredibly productive and rewarding. We marveled at the natural beauty of our surroundings, we took hundreds of visitors to our booth for a wild ride on the Liquid Galaxy, and we met with some of the world’s leading experts on sustainable development.

Several of those experts participated in our official Side Event, titled “Tools for Mobile Data Collection: From the Ground to the Cloud” on Monday, June 18th. We’ve been using the “ground to the cloud” phrase a lot these days. It was coined by Vasco van Roosmalen of ECAM, who helped the Surui tribe of the Brazilian Amazon get certification to enter the carbon credit market.

The idea is that data can be collected offline -- using, for instance, Android smartphones and open-source software called Open Data Kit (ODK) -- and then, back in an online environment, uploaded to Google cloud services (like Google Maps Engine) to display in a map. The Surui use this method to collect ground data for their carbon offsets project, and if you download the recently launched Surui Cultural Map you can see exactly where they collected their data. The Surui expect to avoid the emission of 6 million tons of carbon over the 30 years by avoiding the deforestation of 40 thousand hectares of forests and protecting an additional 200,000 hectares.

Two other participants at our event, Fundação Amazonas Sustentável (FAS) and The Jane Goodall Institute demonstrated the importance of community participation in keeping trees standing. FAS is using Open Data Kit to monitor and manage the forest reserves in Juma, Rio Madeira Reserve and in Rio Negro in the Brazilian Amazon. Dr. Lilian Pintea, with Timothy Akugizibwe, Sood Ndimuligo and other Jane Goodall Institute staff, trained over 100 Village Forest Monitors in Tanzania and Uganda to take part in protecting their forest. They’ve also mapped chimpanzee distribution alongside biomass models from Dr. Alessandro Baccini of Woods Hole Research Center (see credits in photo caption).

This is very exciting because it has never been done before. Now, stakeholders in Tanzania and elsewhere can substantially cut their hardware, software and data storage and management costs. They can now fully focus fully on comparing the biomass model with what’s actually on the ground, and develop maps and statistics that better meets decision-makers' information needs. The new biomass map of western Tanzania shows the amount of biological material (and carbon) in the region, and could be an important predictor for modeling potential distribution of chimpanzees in the region.

From Rio+20

According to partner Aliança da Terra, it is possible for Brazil's farmers to help feed the world, contribute to economic development, and find a balance with our global human and environmental needs. They’ve created a Registry of Socio-Environmental Responsibility for Brazilian producers of soy, cattle, corn and other crops who want to practice their trade in a way that complies with Brazilian law and doesn’t degrade their land for future farming activities. They launched their new website at the side event, featuring maps of the 400+ properties in the Registry as well as their fire brigades to stop the spread of fire in the Amazon. These maps were created with Google Maps Engine, and Aliança da Terra was one of the early grantees of the Google Maps Engine Grants program.

From Rio+20

We were joined by other inspiring speakers on the Ground to the Cloud Story, including World Resources Institute, who previewed their Global Forest Watch 2.0, the Governors’ Climate and Forests Task Force & IPAM, and Imazon (who made their own announcement earlier this week). The important work they’re doing brings a quote from Sir Winston Churchill to mind:

“What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes and to make this muddled world a better place for those who will live in it after we are gone?”

Posted by Tanya Birch, Google Earth Outreach Team

Towards Crowdsourcing Forest Monitoring: lessons from SAD powered by Google Earth Engine

2012-06-19T16:10:00.002-07:00

(Throughout this week we'll be publishing a series of blog posts about our activities at Rio+20, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development. Our full schedule at the conference is available here, and follow our activities as they happen at #googleatrio20. This guest post is from Google Earth Engine partner Carlos Souza of Imazon.)

In the last seven years Brazil has reduced deforestation considerably, and forest monitoring has been a key part of this effort. Imazon, a Brazilian NGO working to promote sustainable development in the Amazon, has developed a forest monitoring system called SAD, and has been working with Google to integrate Google Earth Engine into our work. We’re now ready to share our progress and to take the next step in our efforts to crowdsource forest monitoring in Brazil and, potentially, the rest of the world.

First a bit about Imazon and our work. SAD is an acronym, in Portuguese, for Sistema de Alerta de Desmatamento, or Deforestation Alert System. This system detects and measures deforestation and forest degradation in Brazil by analyzing MODIS satellite imagery. The idea is to track deforestation in the same way the government tracks inflation, making it a regularly updated indicator of the overall health of the country.

SAD analysis is quite complex, involving a great deal of satellite data. The end result of the analysis is a ratio of soil, photosynthetic vegetation, and non-photosyntheic vegetation for each pixel in a MODIS image covering the Brazilian Amazon. SAD tracks and reports deforestation and forest degradation on a monthly basis by calculating changes in this ratio for satellite images acquired at different times. We provide this map, along with deforestation alerts, to key authorities working to fight illegal deforestation in the Amazon.

This past weekend at Google’s “From the Ground to the Cloud” event at Rio+20 we proudly announced the next step in the evolution of SAD: SAD-EE, powered by Google Earth Engine. Starting in July, Imazon's monthly deforestation reports -- which includes deforestation happening while we are here at Rio+20 -- will be generated by SAD-EE.

SAD-EE improves Imazon’s forest monitoring program in several ways:

We can now access and process the data using Google’s cloud, which dramatically changes how we work. For instance, during the testing phase of using SAD-EE we reduced the amount of time we spend downloading and managing the very large data sets of MODIS images by 50%, and analysis in the cloud is much faster than on our desktop computers. Getting this information to the authorities faster can be translated into several hectares of forests saved each month
SAD-EE is integrated with the Internet, mobile phone and computer tablet technologies, making it easier for local organizations to access it.
The system can be used outside Brazil, allowing other tropical forest countries to monitor their forests. Indeed, there is now a project to make this happen through a partnership with Google and the World Resources Institute, via the Global Forest Watch Program.

SAD-EE's reporting tool

For me, the most exciting aspect of SAD-EE is that the system demonstrates the potential for Google Earth Engine to become a multi-sensor, multi-algorithm, multi-technology, crowdsourcing environmental monitoring platform. As Google Earth Engine evolves, it is allowing scientists and remote sensing users to share their knowledge and tools and enabling large groups of people to track and report changes in our planet.

Posted by Carlos Souza, Senior Researcher, Imazon

The Surui Cultural Map

2012-06-18T10:23:00.000-07:00

(Throughout this week we'll be publishing a series of blog posts about our activities at Rio+20, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development. Our full schedule at the conference is available here, and follow our activities as they happen at #googleatrio20.)

This week, at the Rio+20 conference, the Surui tribe of the Brazilian Amazon are launching their Surui Cultural Map on Google Earth. This represents the culmination of a unique five-year collaboration between the Surui people and Google, which began in June 2007 when Chief Almir Surui first visited Google and proposed a partnership. The story of that visit, and the remarkable project that followed, are told in a new short documentary also launching here at Rio+20: “Trading Bows and Arrows for Laptops: Carbon and Culture.”

Training the Surui youth as mapmakers
Over three visits to the Surui territory between 2008 and last month, our Google Earth Outreach team taught Surui youth how to take photos and videos and to collect stories from their elders (such as from the time before first contact with the modern world). Then they learned how to upload these to the Google cloud using tools like Picasa, Docs, and YouTube. From there we used Spreadsheet Mapper 3 to bind it all together to create a Google Earth KML of their map, which contains almost 300 sites.

Map highlights
Through this project, my team has learned that maps are an expression of culture. Mapmakers refer to the “atomic element” of a map as a point of interest, or POI. The Surui mapmakers created POIs that reflect their traditional culture’s close interdependency with their forest home. So instead of hotels and gas stations, on the Surui map you’ll find the locations of parrots and toucans, or the three kinds of trees necessary to make their bows and arrows. You’ll learn where to find the Acai trees (which provide delicious fruit as well as the thatch for their maloca longhouses), the locations of good hunting grounds for the porcao (wild pig), and where the jaguar roam (jaguars have particular spiritual significance to the Surui people and figure in their creation myth). There are also sites and stories of historical battles with other tribes and with the white settlers who started arriving after “first contact” in 1969. Here’s an example POI for the Jenipapo tree:

The text reads: “Jenipapo fruit is produced by the jenipapo tree, which reaches twenty feet high. From the meaty part of the green fruit, an ink is extracted with which human skin can be painted. This makes the fruit very important for the Surui, because the art of painting is always included in everything that they do, especially in celebrations and rituals. The art of painting is one of the things most valued by Paiter. Each occasion calls for a different type of painting.”

Here’s a rich storytelling tour of the Surui Cultural Map, narrated by Chief Almir and the Surui youth who were the star mapmakers:

As Chief

Almir says at the conclusion of the Surui people’s Google Earth tour:

Without the forest, our entire culture would disappear. And without our culture, the forest would have disappeared a long time ago. It’s important to live in a sustainable way and to strengthen those whose livelihoods directly depend on a healthy ecosystem. We have a 50-year sustainability plan, which includes solutions for our territory. An example is the Surui Carbon Project, which uses technology to monitor the carbon stock of forest and trade it in the market for carbon credits. Our hope is that we can come together virtually and in person, and that we can find and implement solutions together.

It’s been a great honor for us to work with the Surui people and to experience their world view, especially to see how they blend their traditional knowledge and culture with modern technology. We’ve learned from Chief Almir that partnerships, consensus and collaboration are central; in that spirit, we’d like to thank our partners on this project: ECAM, Kanindé and Brazilian filmmaker Denise Zmekhol, who has documented the life of the Surui people for more than twenty years.

You can watch a video of the tour or download it in English or Portuguese. To learn more about the Surui tribe, known as “Paiter Surui,” please visit www.paiter.org.

Posted by Rebecca Moore, Manager, Google Earth Outreach and Google Earth Engine

Energy efficiency in the cloud

2012-06-18T06:00:00.000-07:00

At Google, we’re obsessed with building energy efficient data centers that enable cloud computing. Besides helping you be more productive, cloud-based services like Google Apps can reduce energy use, lower carbon emissions and save you money in the process. Last year, we crunched the numbers and found that Gmail is up to 80 times more energy-efficient than running traditional in-house email. We’ve sharpened our pencils again to see how Google Apps as a whole—documents, spreadsheets, email and other applications—stacks up against the standard model of locally hosted services. Our results show that a typical organization can achieve energy savings of about 65-85% by migrating to Google Apps.

Lower energy use results in less carbon pollution and more energy saved for organizations. That’s what happened at the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), which recently switched its approximately 17,000 users to Google Apps for Government. We found that the GSA was able to reduce server energy consumption by nearly 90% and carbon emissions by 85%. That means the GSA will save an estimated $285,000 annually on energy costs alone, a 93% cost reduction.

How is the cloud so energy efficient? It’s all about reducing energy use for servers and server cooling. Here’s how it works:

A typical organization has a lot more servers than it needs—for backup, failures and spikes in demand for computing. Cloud-based service providers like Google aggregate demand across thousands of people, substantially increasing how much servers are utilized. And our data centers use equipment and software specially designed to minimize energy use. The cloud can do the same work much more efficiently than locally hosted servers.

In fact, according to a study by the Carbon Disclosure Project, by migrating to the cloud, companies with over $1 billion in revenues in the U.S. and Europe could achieve substantial reductions in energy costs and carbon emissions by 2020:

US companies could save $12.3 billion and up to 85.7 million metric tonnes of CO2

UK companies would save £1.2 billion and more than 9.2 million metric tonnes of CO2

French companies could save nearly €700 million and 1.2 million metric tonnes of CO2

We’ve built efficient data centers all over the world, even designing them in ways that make the best use of the natural environment, and we continue working to improve their performance. We think using the super-efficient cloud to deliver services like Google Apps can be part of the solution towards a more energy efficient future.

Posted by Urs Hoelzle, Senior Vice President for Technical Infrastructure

Where the roads aren't - and why it matters

2012-06-16T11:01:00.000-07:00

The concept of "roadless areas" is a well-established conservation measure coming from conservation biologists from all around the globe. The idea is that roads in most parts of the world lead to the unmanageable private access to the natural resources of an area, most often leading to ecosystem degradation and without the consent of the local and indigenous communities. Keeping an area roadless means that the specific territory is shielded against such exogenous pressures, thus sustaining its ecosystem services at the maximum possible level. An important tool which will drive environmental, development as well as global climate change policy forward will be the Google development of an interactive satellite map of the world's roadless areas.

We were intrigued by Kriton’s idea, so we decided to give it a try.

Start with where the Roads are

We started by taking all the road data (plus rail and navigable waterways) in Google Maps today, and importing that into our Google Earth Engine platform for analysis. For example, here is what the road network in Australia looks like when zoomed out to country-scale:

Then figure out where the roads aren't

Based upon advice from Kriton Arsenis and his project collaborators in the Society for Conservation Biology, we decided to define a “Roadless Area” (for the purposes of this prototype map) as any area of land more than ten kilometers from the nearest road. Using the global-scale spatial-analytic capabilities of Google Earth Engine, we then generated this raster map, such that every pixel in the map is color-coded based on distance from the nearest road. Every pixel colored green is at least 10km from the nearest road, and therefore considered part of a Roadless Area. For example:

Or consider the island of Madagascar, home to some of the most unique species on Earth:

From these maps it becomes more apparent how the simple construction of new roads can fragment and disturb habitats, potentially driving threatened species closer to extinction.

Finally we decided to try running this “Roadless Area” algorithm at global-scale:

Large roadless areas are readily apparent such as the Amazon and Indonesian rainforests, Canadian boreal forest and Sahara desert.

Caveats and Next Steps

The road data used to produce these maps inevitably contains inaccuracies and omissions. The good news is that Google already has a tool, Google Map Maker, that can be used by anyone to submit new or corrected map data, and in fact this tool is already being used in partnership with the United Nations to support global emergency response. We look forward to continued development of this prototype, which can help to turn the abstract concept of “Roadless Areas” into something quite concrete and, we hope, useful to policymakers, scientists and communities around the world. To explore these Roadless Area maps yourself, visit the Google Earth Engine Map Gallery.

Posted by Rebecca Moore, Manager, Google Earth Outreach and Google Earth Engine