Solar

Can Google gobble up enough renewables?

Can Google gobble up enough renewables?
TVA, Origis Energy help Google get to 100% renewable energy for its data centers with 100-MW solar farm in Obion County. (Courtesy: Origis)

Google, a tech behemoth that in some way likely enabled you to reach this article, has some ambitious clean energy goals, including achieving net-zero emissions across all of its operations and value chain by 2030.

That seemed entirely doable until those dang data centers became such an energy suck (shaking my fist like I just got caught by the Scooby Doo crew).

Google’s greenhouse gas emissions are headed in the wrong direction, fast- they’ve increased nearly 48% since 2019.

Google’s total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from financial year 2019 to 2022, including Scope 1, 2 (market-based), and 3 emissions (in million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent) Courtesy: Statista 2024

“This result was primarily due to increases in data center energy consumption and supply chain emissions,” an annual Google environmental report read. In 2023, Google’s data centers consumed about 24 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity.

Goldman Sachs Research estimates that data center power demand will grow 160% by 2030. A single ChatGPT query uses 2.9 watt-hours of electricity, nearly 10 times as much as a classic Google search (.3 watt-hours). As consulting firm Slalom’s Tim Stafford put it recently: think before you check the Yankees score on ChatGPT.

Now Google more or less admits the uncertainty around an AI arms race for more and more computational power may make achieving such targets… difficult.

But the company that allows you to type drivel like “Boyband 90’s not NSYNC or Backstreet or 98 Degrees” and find the O-Town song you’re looking for is coming out of the corner swinging.

Google’s new renewables

This week, Google announced a 1.5 GWp solar development contract with Energix Renewables and closed on a tax equity investment with Swift Current Energy on the massive 800 MWdc Double Black Diamond project in southern Illinois.

In the first deal, Energix will supply electricity and Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) generated from its solar projects to Google and the agreement includes an option for future expansion. The parties have already signed the first two Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) under this agreement. That’s some much-needed good news in PJM territory, as expressed by Asa (Asi) Levinger, CEO of the Energix Group.

“This joint effort with Google not only strengthens our position in the PJM market but also opens up opportunities for future expansion into other power markets, we expect to deliver the 1.5 GW in the next 2-3 years,” he said.

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“There is no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to decarbonizing our electricity grids and no one company can do it on their own. We are proud of our work with Energix Renewables to unlock new clean energy in PJM,” added Amanda Peterson Corio, Google’s global head of data center energy. “This type of collaboration is essential as we continue to progress towards our ambition to run on 24/7 carbon-free energy on every grid where we operate every hour of every day.”

Google’s tax equity financing of Double Black Diamond Solar, expected to be the largest solar project east of the Mississippi when it reaches commercial operations in early 2025, utilizes Energy Communities and domestic content adders in the Inflation Reduction Act. That project is expected to reduce regional carbon dioxide emissions by about one million tons per year.

“As we work to responsibly grow our infrastructure, we need to partner with companies like Swift Current who understand the nuances of the energy markets where we operate and can help unlock new clean energy at a rate that matches the pace and scale of demand growth on electric grids today,” said Google’s Amanda Peterson Corio, pulling double duty in the press release statement department.

Constellation NewEnergy will purchase a portion of the energy and RECs generated by Double Black Diamond Solar to serve seven big customers: The City of Chicago (O’Hare International Airport and Midway International Airport), Cook County Illinois, CVS Health, Loyola University of Chicago, PPG, State Farm, and TransUnion.

In June, Google entered into an agreement with Berkshire Hathaway electric utility NV Energy to power some of its Nevada data centers with about 115 MW of geothermal energy. A little further back in 2022, Google teamed up with ENGIE on a 100 MW PPA to provide more than 5 TWh of renewable energy from Scotland’s Moray West wind farm.

Google reports more than 7 GW of renewable energy projects worldwide, as colorfully displayed on the site tracking Google’s carbon-free energy progress.

A map highlighting Google’s renewable energy projects around the world (courtesy: Google)

But what about the other guys?

Google’s data center growth-driven compatriots are finding themselves in similar predicaments, and a couple of the big ones, notably Microsoft and Amazon, are amping up their commitments to renewable energy in kind.

Microsoft’s total carbon emissions have risen by nearly 30% since 2020, according to its latest Environmental Sustainability Report. That is bad news bears for a company aiming to be carbon-negative by 2030, removing more carbon from the atmosphere than Microsoft and its supply chain emits. By 2050, the company wants to have removed as much carbon as it ever emitted since it was founded in 1975.

Fittingly, this year there has been a flurry of announcements tying Microsoft to renewable energy development.

This month, Pivot Energy announced an ambitious five-year framework agreement with Microsoft to develop up to 500 megawatts (MWac) of community-scale solar energy projects across the United States between 2025 and 2029. The agreement will enable Pivot to develop approximately 150 U.S. solar projects in roughly 100 communities across 20 states. Microsoft will purchase the project Renewable Energy Credits for a 20-year term, and the first projects are expected to come online before the end of this year.

In May, Microsoft inked two 15-year PPAs with developer RWE for two new onshore wind farms in Texas with a combined capacity of 446 MW and shook hands with Canada’s Brookfield Asset Management on the largest single corporate PPA ever, agreeing to develop more than 10.5 gigawatts of new renewable energy capacity.

Microsoft is partnering with Google and Nucor Corporation to develop new business models and aggregate their demand for advanced clean electricity technologies, intending to accelerate the development of “first-of-a-kind” and early commercial projects, including advanced nuclear, next-generation geothermal, clean hydrogen, long-duration energy storage (LDES), and more.

Microsoft also recently announced a partnership with the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) to use high-performance computing in the cloud and artificial intelligence to accelerate scientific discovery, with an initial focus on chemistry and materials science for battery solutions.

Amazon aims to reach net-zero across its operations by 2040, co-founding The Climate Pledge in 2019 and investing more than $2 billion in support of sustainable technologies. Last year, Amazon claimed 100% of the electricity it consumed globally was matched with renewable energy, initially a 2030 goal for the company.

Some recent Amazon PPAs include a 98.4 MW wind project with Avangrid, a couple of solar farms in Ohio, one in Japan, and a 473 MW deal with ENGIE on the Moray West offshore windfarm Google signed with back in 2022.

According to BloombergNEF, in 2023 Amazon purchased more solar and wind power than the next three companies combined, announcing 74 PPAs totaling 8.8 GW of capacity. The other top PPA purchasers: Meta (3 GW), LyondellBasell Industries (1.3 GW), and the aforementioned Google (1 GW). More than 200 corporations announced PPAs in 2023, highlighting how the agreements are being used to promote decarbonization efforts, per BloombergNEF.

Is this “matching” or actual matching matching?

How much of an impact PPAs actually make is a more complex question that deserves digging into. Offsetting carbon in bulk doesn’t necessarily belay the larger impact of that carbon.

In some cases, there’s an opportunity to go beyond a PPA and more effectively decarbonize the grid through hourly load matching, or 24/7 matching, according to an analysis by RMI. RMI defines hourly load matching as “where a buyer attempts to procure sufficient carbon-free energy to match a given facility’s load in every hour.” RMI’s Clean Power by the Hour determined that costs increased with the level of hourly load matching compared to costs for meeting annual procurement targets, near-term emissions reductions for hourly load matching depend on the regional grid mix, and hourly procurement strategies can create new markets for emerging technologies.

Google has been carbon-neutral since 2007 through carbon offsets, and was one of the first companies to purchase renewable energy directly through PPAs in 2017. The company is now in the process of transitioning from 100% annual renewable energy matching to 24/7 matching as part of its 2030 goals.

Microsoft has been signing 24/7 hourly matching agreements with projects fueling its data centers, including one with Powerex Corp and another with ENGIE in Texas. 100s of global companies have signed the 24/7 Carbon-Free Energy Compact, including Google and Microsoft but notably not Amazon, which has yet to announce plans for 24/7 matching.