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

(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

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

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

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

(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

(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