Google Chief Sustainability Officer, Kate Brandt explains why a CSO’s daily work is no longer simply confined to decarbonizing a businesses. For Google, part of the Race to Zero via the Exponential Roadmap Initiative (ERI), this means empowering individuals, businesses, organizations and governments with quality information through products and platforms, and by helping drive systems change to accelerate climate action.
Leading Google’s green revolution
Sustainability has been part of Google’s DNA since our founding. In this role, I am grateful to be in the position to lead Google’s efforts to achieve its sustainability goals across our business through both our products and our operations.
A CSO’s daily work is no longer simply confined to decarbonizing our businesses, or developing solutions that help others in their sustainability journeys. Some of the key questions for CSOs today have become how we successfully balance compliance with innovation, how we can partner internally to effect real change for the benefit of the business and how we embed sustainability into core business priorities. At Google, we’re focused on solving the problems we are uniquely placed to address by empowering individuals, businesses, organizations and governments with quality information through our products and platforms, and by helping drive systems change to accelerate climate action.
This means that no two days are the same and gives me the opportunity to work with teams across the entire company. From helping identify ways that enable people to make more sustainable decisions in Maps, to speaking with our Research team that is looking for ways to use AI in order to predict floods and trace wildfires, and ultimately – help protect vulnerable communities, and working with teams who are sourcing our clean energy to help us achieve 24/7 carbon-free energy, I aim to bring insights into Google that remove barriers and empower our teams to build technologies that advance climate action.
Success and climate progress will flow from working collaboratively and building awareness and consensus across teams and functions – from the product designers to the engineers, the accountants, and the lawyers.
From AI-powered environmental solutions to pioneering circularity in tech
Climate change is one of the biggest challenges humanity is facing today. Addressing it requires partnership across business, public policy, academia, international organizations and communities – we all need to work together towards the goal of achieving net zero.
A CSO’s daily work is no longer simply confined to decarbonizing our businesses, or developing solutions that help others in their sustainability journeys.
Tech has a very important role to play in helping the world decarbonize. Last year, new research by BCG and Google found that AI has the potential to help mitigate 5-10% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2030.
At Google, we are advancing climate action by providing helpful information to people who use our products, using AI to predict climate-related events, and optimizing climate action. We have developed, for example, tested solutions to help drivers choose the most fuel-efficient route to their destination, predict floods accurately up to seven days in advance and help the aviation industry reduce its carbon footprint by avoiding contrails – the thin, white lines you sometimes see behind airplanes.
At the same time, we have a goal to increase the circularity of our consumer hardware products, operations, and communities. For example, by increasing our use of recycled materials, we’ll reduce waste while signaling our demand for more circular materials. In addition, 100% of Made by Google products launching in 2022, and every year after that, will include recycled materials, with a drive to maximise recycled content wherever possible. Finally, we are committed to eliminating plastic from packaging and making all packaging fully recyclable by 2025.
We also support public policies that accelerate the transition to a circular economy by designing out waste and pollution, to maximize the use of finite resources.
Radical collaboration for a low-carbon future
At Google, we’re committed to achieving net zero across our operations and value chain by 2030. To accomplish this, we aim to reduce 50% of our combined Scope 1, Scope 2 (marketbased), and Scope 3 absolute emissions (versus our 2019 baseline) before 2030, and plan to invest in nature-based and technology-based carbon removal solutions to neutralize our remaining emissions .
But we know that no company can achieve net zero alone. Accelerating decarbonization requires collaboration among business and policy leaders, technological innovation and regulatory support.
Initiatives like the Race to Zero are integral to driving this collaborative progress towards creating a low-carbon world.
Exponential Roadmap Initiative (ERI) has been a great partner and thought leader – helping us to think through our strategys and collaborating on informational programming at New York Climate Week (NYCW) and COP28. We co-hosted Solutions House with ERI and Futerra at NYCW and facilitated great conversations around climate solutions, the challenges of Scope 3, advanced clean energy technologies and more. It proved to be a great opportunity to convene stakeholders and share learnings.
24/7 carbon-free energy and cutting-edge efficiency
In 2017, we became the first major company to match 100% of our annual global electricity use with renewable energy—which we’ve continued to achieve every year since.
We now have a goal to run on 24/7 carbon-free energy 24/7 on every grid where we operate by 2030. In 2022, we achieved approximately 64% round-the-clock carbon-free energy across all of our data centers and offices. We continue to take steps towards our goals and invest in clean energy solutions.
Initiatives like the Race to Zero are integral to driving this collaborative progress towards creating a low-carbon world.
For example, in collaboration with LevelTen Energy, we piloted a new approach that reduces the time to negotiate and execute a clean energy power purchase agreement (PPA) by roughly 80%. Within one year of introducing this approach to the market, we announced that we’ve signed power purchase agreements (PPAs) for more than 1.5 gigawatts (GW) of clean energy capacity in North America and Europe.
Finally, we are committed to operating as efficiently as possible. Our data centers are more than 1.5x as energy efficient as a typical enterprise data center, and, compared with five years ago, we now deliver approximately three times as much computing power with the same amount of electrical power.
In order to achieve these goals, we have to work in partnership with business and policy leaders. For example, we’ve partnered with clean energy startup Fervo on the world’s first corporate agreement to develop an enhanced geothermal power project and have a history of supporting policies that can help unlock access to clean power.
Catalyzing industry-wide and societal transitions
Our work on sustainability started with our own operations, and we’ve worked hard to lead by example, with the ultimate goal of driving larger systems change. We share the innovations we create and the lessons we learn with others, so we can help accelerate the global transition to a low-carbon and sustainable future. For example, for our 24/7 CFE goal, we’re working to transition both our operations and the electricity grids that serve us to cleaner sources of power, through a combination of clean energy procurement, technology innovation, and policy advocacy. A great example is a new pilot we launched with Nucor and Microsoft to develop new business models and aggregate their demand for advanced clean electricity technologies that accelerate the development of first-of-a-kind and early commercial projects, including advanced nuclear, next-generation geothermal, clean hydrogen, long-duration energy storage and others.
We also believe that Google has a unique opportunity that extends beyond reducing the environmental impacts of our own operations and value chain. By organizing information about our planet and making it actionable through technology and platforms, we can help partners and customers create even more positive impact. With our deep legacy in research and breakthroughs we’re making in AI, we can give people new ways of accessing information and accelerate innovation to tackle climate change.
That’s why we aim to help individuals, cities, and other partners collectively reduce 1 gigaton of their carbon equivalent emissions annually by 2030. We’re doing this by empowering people with high-quality information through our products and platforms that billions of users engage to help them make decisions that can drive positive action for our planet. For example, Eco-friendly routing in Maps gives travelers the option to choose the most fuel-efficient route if it’s not already the fastest one — since launching in October 2021, it’s estimated to have helped prevent more than 2.4 million metric tons of CO2e emissions — the equivalent of taking approximately 500,000 fuel-based cars off the road for a year.
We’re also helping partners and customers to reduce their emissions and achieve sustainability goals by advancing transformative technology for sustainability and climate action. For example, we teamed up with American Airlines and Breakthrough Energy to use AI and satellite imagery to reduce the warming effects of contrails. After 70 test flights, we found that the pilots were able to reduce contrails by 54%. We’re now testing this solution in Western Europe – the busiest airspace in the world – in collaboration with Eurocontrol.
AI-driven innovations to accelerate innovation
In 2023, terms like “carbon footprint”, “charging station” and “solar energy” all reached all-time highs. So did terms like “air quality index”, “wildfire” and “water security”. So we know that people are looking for more ways to be sustainable as well as information on how to adapt to a changing climate. I’m excited to be working at a company that is in a position to develop and scale such solutions that can make a difference both in people’s lives and for the planet.
We’re empowering individuals, businesses, organizations and governments with quality information through our products and platforms — like Search, Maps, Environmental Insights Explorer, and Google Cloud — that billions of people engage with every day to help make decisions that will drive positive action for our planet. With our deep legacy in research and breakthroughs we’re making in AI, we can give people new ways of accessing information and accelerate innovation to tackle climate change.
Hidden tech gems in sustainability
I’m very hopeful about the role that technology can play in order to help build a carbon-free economy, from optimizing the way we live to helping protect communities in the case of extreme weather events. Just last year, we launched Project Green Light to create waves of green lights, helping cities improve traffic flow and reducing stop-and-go emissions.
We know that cities are also looking for ways to prevent “heat islands,” we combine AI and aerial imagery to show where shaded areas are in the city.
We’re also exploring how AI can predict where a fire will spread. Our wildfire boundary tracker uses AI and satellite imagery to map large fires in close to real-time and updates every 15 minutes. This is available on Google Search and Maps in fire-prone parts of the U.S., Canada, Mexico and Australia, and we are working to expand coverage in more vulnerable parts of the world.
Because we know that cities are also looking for ways to prevent “heat islands,” we combine AI and aerial imagery to show where shaded areas are in the city. This tool, known as Tree Canopy is available in more than 2,000 cities globally, helping cities better understand where to plant more trees to reduce heat.
The path ahead
There is still a lot of work to be done across the public and private sectors in order to facilitate the transition to a decarbonized global economy at the speed and scale required in this decisive decade. None of us can do it alone and the private sector has a very important role to play.
I’m particularly grateful to be working for a company like Google that has the technological capacity and talented workforce to be able to drive so much of the innovation needed for us to facilitate the transition to a lower-carbon world.
As the world looks to build for the future, we know that strong public policy action is also critical to creating prosperous, equitable, and resilient carbon-free economies.
We support public policies that help strengthen climate action, establish emissions reduction targets and accelerate the development and deployment of next generation low-carbon technology, including harnessing digital technologies like Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.
Main Image: Anthony Quintano / Wikimedia Commons.
As told to the Climate Champions’ Team in March 2024.
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