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Our 2023 Environmental Report

Aerial image of the the water and the coastline

Today we shared our 2023 Environmental Report outlining how we are empowering individuals to take action, working together with our partners and customers, and operating our business sustainably.

For the sixth year in a row, we've matched 100% of our annual global electricity use with renewable energy purchases, even as our business has grown. We are now working to address the issue that renewable energy is not available all the time and everywhere by aiming to run on carbon-free energy (CFE) 24/7 and to achieve net-zero emissions across all of our operations and value chain by 2030. As we continue to help build a more sustainable future, we’re also focusing on two emerging opportunities: the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and empowering others with information to reduce emissions. By making information accessible and driving innovation forward through our products and platforms that billions of people engage with every day, we can help drive positive action for people and our planet.

Here’s a look at the key progress we made in 2022:

  • AI for sustainability: We’re applying AI to problems that can help people live more sustainably and adapt to climate change. For example, in 2022, we launched Flood Hub, which allows local governments and aid organizations to identify when a riverine flood will occur up to seven days in advance. AI is a powerful tool for optimization and we are using it to optimize our own operations, and we’re working to reduce energy use and emissions from AI computing in our data centers.
  • Helpful information: Last year, our core products helped over 1 billion users make more sustainable choices. For example, as of the end of 2022, eco-friendly routing in Maps provided users with information that is estimated to have helped prevent more than 1.2 million metric tons of carbon emissions since launch — equivalent to taking approximately 250,000 fuel-based cars off the road for a year. 1
  • Clean energy: To help make progress toward our goal to achieve net-zero emissions, we achieved approximately 64% round-the-clock CFE across all of our data centers and offices. This past year, we expanded our CFE reporting to include offices and third-party data centers, in addition to Google-owned and operated data centers. We signed up for more clean energy this year than ever before with 20 renewable energy agreements in 2022 and an estimated future spend of more than $4 billion.2
  • Sustainable campuses: We opened our new Bay View campus, which is all-electric and net water-positive. The campus also restores over 17 acres of high-value nature and incorporates the leading principles of circular design.
  • Water replenishment: At the end of 2022, our contracted watershed projects have replenished 271 million gallons of water — equivalent to more than 400 Olympic-sized swimming pools — to support our target to replenish 120% of the freshwater we used.

This transition to a more sustainable future is going to be very challenging — both for us and for the world at large — and there’s no playbook for making it happen. But we see our efforts as part of a bigger picture, setting our goals to help scale global solutions, and we're optimistic that we can, through our efforts in both information and innovation, play a helpful role in accelerating climate action.


More Information


1

Google uses a high-quality ML prediction model to estimate the expected fuel or energy consumption for each route option when users request driving directions. We identify the route that we predict will consume the least amount of fuel or energy. If this route is not already the fastest one and it offers meaningful energy and fuel savings with only a small increase in driving time, we recommend it to the user. To calculate enabled emissions reductions, we tally the fuel usage from the chosen fuel-efficient routes and subtract it from the predicted fuel consumption that would have occurred on the fastest route without eco-friendly routing and apply adjustments for factors such as: CO2e factors, fleet factors, well-to-wheels factors, and powertrain mismatch factors. We then input the estimated prevented emissions into the EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies Calculator to calculate equivalent cars off the road for a year. The 2022 figure covers estimated emissions prevented after eco-friendly routing was launched, from October 2021 through December 2022. Enabled emissions reductions estimates include inherent uncertainty due to factors that include the lack of primary data and precise information about real-world actions and their effects. These factors contribute to a range of possible outcomes, within which we report a central value.

2

This estimated spend is based on contracts signed to purchase clean energy for our operations. Actual spend may vary from these estimates based on changes in renewable electricity output from operational projects, the number of contracts signed, and energy market prices.


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