This week, at the Google Cloud Next ’21 conference, Google accelerated its efforts to combat climate change by announcing new sustainability projects centered on Google Cloud.
It began by launching Carbon Footprint, a new service for clients that measures the total carbon emissions related to their use of the Google Cloud Platform. It was created in partnership with Atos, Etsy, HSBC, L’Oréal, Salesforce, and other Google clients to measure both the gross and net carbon emissions related to the Google Cloud Platform’s power usage.
Google claims that the new tool would make it easier for clients to demonstrate to their investors and workers their carbon footprint and sustainability activities, addressing the growing demand for Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) reporting. Google has also made its technique for estimating carbon footprints public to make the statistics more auditable.
It’s nice to have fresh insights into sustainability, but Google is also offering technologies to transform data into practical insights to minimize carbon emissions. Active Assist Recommender, a suite of cloud administration tools, will now feature a new sustainability impact category. Customers will also be able to estimate the gross carbon emissions they may save by cutting idle resources with the new Unattended Project Recommender. Based on factors such as API, networking activity, billing, and other parameters, the program utilizes AI to identify which projects have been abandoned. Active Assist has already discovered over 600,000kg of gross CO2-equivalent waste linked with inactive projects that may be discarded, according to the business. Google emphasized that eliminating these inactive projects not only reduces carbon production but also improves security by lowering a customer’s attack surface.
Google Earth Engine has been added to the Google Cloud Platform to help businesses plan their growth sites. Google Earth Engine is a platform that integrates satellite images and geospatial information to assist businesses in tracking, monitoring, and forecasting changes in the Earth’s surface caused by extreme weather events or human-induced activities. Customers may now utilize Earth Engine data in other geospatial-enabled products such as the cloud data warehouse BigQuery, which is presently in preview.
Google expects that by extending the Google Earth Engine to the workplace, its clients will be able to build innovative solutions for responsible commodities procurement, sustainable land management, and carbon emission reductions. The tracking of the impact of catastrophic weather occurrences and human-focused activities by Earth Engine will also assist businesses in reducing operating expenses and managing disaster risks.
Furthermore, Google is growing its agreements with Carto, Climate Engine, Geotab, and other partners to link their data and core applications to Google Cloud on a worldwide scale. They include more detailed data on water availability, agricultural statistics, weather threats, and daily satellite images into the Earth Engine to assist firms in launching new sustainable projects.
Google is also making an internal effort to address climate change by bringing sustainability teams into corporate planning meetings and assisting developers in selecting more sustainable solutions during the application development process. It also intends to measure carbon effect as one of its key performance metrics, issuing third-party verified progress reports, and will expand its partnership with industry, including areas such as education and industry specialists.
In addition, the organization highlighted some of its recent triumphs. Google has purchased renewable energy to offset all of its power consumption during the last four years. This, along with other efforts to decarbonize digital apps and infrastructure, is part of the company’s continuous goal of running its whole business on carbon-free energy by 2030.
Kesiya