They talked about the tech giant's growing demand for energy and what technologies the company is looking to meet it. If you weren't able to join us, let's dive deeper into this session and see how the company is thinking about energy in the face of rapid growth in AI.
I've been keeping a close eye on Google's energy work this year. Like the rest of the tech industry, the company is seeing growing demand for electricity in its data centers. This may hinder the achievement of the main goal that Google has been talking about for many years.
Look, back in 2020 the company announced ambitious goal: by 2030, it aims to use carbon-free energy 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Essentially, this means that Google will purchase enough renewable energy from the grids it operates on to meet all of its electricity demand, and the purchases will match so that electricity will have to be generated when the company actually uses the energy. (For more on the nuances of big tech's renewable energy promises, see James' item from last year.)
Google's goal is an ambitious one, and on stage Tian said the company is still striving to achieve it, but admitted it faces challenges as artificial intelligence advances.
“It was always a moonshot,” she said. “It's very, very hard to achieve, and it gets even harder with this growth. But our point of view is, if we don't move in that direction, we'll never get there.”
According to Google, overall electricity demand more than doubled from 2020 to 2024. latest environmental report. As for the goal of 24/7 carbon-free energy? The company is essentially marking time. If in 2020 for data centers this figure was 67%, then last year it was 66%.
Not going backwards is something of an achievement, given the rapid increase in demand for electricity. But that still leaves the company some distance from the finish line.
To close the gap, Google is signing seemingly permanent energy deals. Two recent announcements Tian discussed on stage were a carbon capture and storage project at an Illinois natural gas plant and plans to restart a shuttered nuclear power plant in Iowa.
