Google Cloud can provide you with technology that helps benefit the planet
Climate change is the major challenge of our time, and we are at a defining moment. At Google, we feel that we have a duty to do our part. In 2007, Google became the first global firm to become carbon neutral and, in2017, we became the first major organization to match 100 percent renewable energy with our energy use. Now, in our third decade of climate action, we are going even further: by helping to build a carbon-free future for everyone. One of the ways we plan to do this is by investing in technologies to help our partners and people all over the world make more sustainable choices. Let’s take a look at how we can help our partners to make meaningful change and create a more sustainable world.
Reducing energy usage has been a major focus for us over the past 10 years. By using data-driven solutions and tools, such as machine learning, we have lessened the resources needed for cooling our data centers by 40%. DeepMind and Google Cloud are making this Cloud infrastructure solution globally available for use by manufacturing facilities, airports, shopping malls, hospitals, and data centers.
We also use data-driven innovation to help our partners minimize their waste. Oden Technology moved to Google Cloud Platform to cut the cost and complexity of its smart factory cloud platform for manufacturing analytics. They use the Internet of Things (IoT) to develop today’s factories, and thereby reduce waste, increase efficiency, and improve safety.
We aspire to create partnerships that will help raise sustainability standards and practices. Our partnership with Unilever is a great example of sustainable sourcing. We are teaming up to capture satellite images of forests, biodiversity and water cycles that intersect their supply chain.
“This collaboration with Google Cloud will take us to the next level in sustainable sourcing,” says Dave Ingram, Unilever’s Chief Procurement Officer. “We will now be able to process and combine complex sets of data like never before. The combination of these sustainability insights with our commercial sourcing information is a significant step-change in transparency, which is crucial to better protect and regenerate nature.”
In addition to our partnership with Unilever, we are working on ways to make the mineral-tracking process more transparent for everyone in the value chain. Minerals have been historically challenging to track as they travel from their original source through the transportation process to smelters, producers, and finally customers around the globe. In 2018, we joined Cisco, SGS, Volkswagen, and Peruvian mining company Minsur, all members of the Responsible Minerals Initiative, to launch a plan for end-to-end mineral traceability. Together, we’re piloting a blockchain protocol with Berlin-based startup Minespider. The startup tracks minerals at every touchpoint while protecting the privacy of participants.
Simplifying complex datasets is critical to increasing transparency within supply chains, and Google Cloud data tools such as Google Cloud Storage, BigQuery and Data Catalog can help with this. These tools can make sense of large amounts of complex data and facilitate metadata management and discovery. In addition, Google Cloud’s planetary-scale geo-spatial platform, including Google Earth Engine, provides accurate satellite imagery and geospatial data. Such data is essential to obtain insights into the impact of sourcing on the environment. Google Cloud’s ML and AI capabilities and tools can fill in data gaps and quickly and efficiently unlock insights.
We are hopeful that this can be the most decisive decade for climate action yet by harnessing new technologies, investing in the right infrastructure and instruments, and empowering partners. We are proud to do our part, and we would love to partner with you to help move the world closer to a carbon-free future for all.