Leading the Way: Economy Countering Political Currents

Six years ago, tech company Google commissioned its first purchase agreement of clean electricity from a renewable energy project. At that time, the aim was to switch completely to renewable energies by 2018. 19 other contracts have been commissioned since then and now Google will be completely green in 2017, at least statistically. At the moment, not enough solar or wind energy capacities are available near their data centers around in the world, especially in Asia. That’s why the company’s plans include focusing more on regional solutions in the future, but as long as this is not yet possible, investments are made primarily in the home market.

95 percent of the clean electricity used by Google comes from wind energy, mostly from wind farms in the US. This is how Google actually fulfills all the prerequisites to be in the favor of president-elect Donald Trump who had led his election campaign under the premise of boosting the American economy and creating new jobs.

This is also pretty much exactly what the wind industry has done in recent years. “Over the last six years, the cost of wind and solar came down 60% and 80%, respectively, proving that renewables are increasingly becoming the lowest cost option,” Urs Hoelzle, senior VP of technical infrastructure, said in a blog post.

Google has invested 3.2 billion euros in projects from the renewable segment, two thirds of which are in the US. And an end is not foreseen, because it is not just the commitment of a single company anymore, but a business model. Google is making sure that more customers in the cloud computing business will decide for the company in the future, precisely because they are committed to sustainability. “To what degree it is a deciding factor on whether you go with Google or somebody else I can’t say, but it will likely be part of some companies’ equation,” Gary Demasi, director of global infrastructure and energy, told Reuters.

Image: Bloomberg New Finance

And data prove Google right: more than 71 percent of the Fortune 100 companies have already set their own targets for switching to renewable energies and more sustainability. “It becomes a lot more compelling if there isn’t a price premium attached,” told Malcolm Woolf, senior vice president of policy at Advanced Energy Economy, SFGate. His agency collected the data for the study. At the same time, he makes it abundantly clear who is responsible for the shift – and who is not: “This is corporate-led – It is not being led by the federal government.”

“We are very technology-agnostic. What we are not is price-agnostic. So if you see our portfolio, it really is driven by the price of technologies,” said Neha Palmer, who has developed Google's energy strategy. And now renewables are hard to beat in price.

Although politics can always intervene in a negative way, the economy is eventually leading the way, at least in capitalist systems. Al Gore has also recognized this. The former US Vice President has been a leading ambassador for environmental issues for years. Recently, he supported an open letter by 800 scientists to Donald Trump demanding that the latter would finally stop denying climate change and instead turn to the scientific facts.

Image: Climate Reality Project

In a guest blog for Scientific American, where the letter was also published, Gore wrote: “The future of the planetary conditions on which human civilization depends are reliant now more than ever upon scientists and innovators, businesses and civil society, and our collective efforts to accelerate the implementation of the solutions to the climate crisis that are already available and cost-effective.“

Policy is deliberately lacking in this list. Gore also explains why: "But just as the changes in our climate do not stop and start with elections, our transition to a sustainable future -- which is well underway – is not dependent on politics or ideology.”

Let's hope that Gore explained this to climate change skeptic Trump, when the two recently met in Washington for talks.

“The story of climate action is one of hope and progress, not despair. This is our Road Forward.” (Al Gore)