Sustainability with Google Cloud
1. Sustainability with Google Cloud
As we get closer to the end of this Cloud Digital Leader training, where you’ve explored how cloud computing can help transform the way you do business, it’s important that we underscore our technology efforts at Google with our commitment to the environment and sustainability. The virtual world, which includes Google Cloud’s network, is built on physical infrastructure, and all those racks of humming servers use huge amounts of energy. Altogether, existing data centers use nearly 2% of the world’s electricity. With this in mind, Google works to make our data centers run as efficiently as possible. Just like our customers, Google is trying to look after the planet. We understand that Google Cloud customers have environmental goals of their own, and running their workloads on Google Cloud can be a part of meeting those goals. Therefore, it’s useful to note that Google's data centers were the first to achieve ISO 14001 certification, which is a standard that outlines a framework for an organization to enhance its environmental performance through improving resource efficiency and reducing waste. As an example of how this is being done, here’s Google’s data center in Hamina, Finland. This facility is one of the most advanced and efficient data centers in the Google fleet. Its cooling system, which uses sea water from the Bay of Finland, reduces energy use and is the first of its kind anywhere in the world. In our founding decade, Google became the first major company to be carbon neutral. In our second decade, we were the first company to achieve 100% renewable energy. And by 2030, we aim to be the first major company to operate completely carbon free. We meet the challenges posed by climate change and the need for resource efficiency by working to empower everyone—businesses, governments, nonprofit organizations, communities, and individuals—to use Google technology to create a more sustainable world. So, what does that look like in practice? Let’s explore an example of how one customer, Kaluza, uses Google Cloud technology to launch smart electric vehicle charging programs that help customers save money while it reduces their carbon footprint. Electric vehicles already account for one in seven car sales globally, and with new gas and diesel cars being phased out across the world, global sales are forecast to reach 73 million units by 2040. But with power grids becoming increasingly dependent on variable energy sources such as wind and solar, rising demand from electric vehicles risks overstraining grids at peak times, which can potentially lead to power outages. Launched by OVO Energy in 2019, Kaluza has taken its deep understanding of the energy market to partner with some of the world’s major energy suppliers and vehicle manufacturers. With a program called Charge Anytime, customers use Kaluza to smart-charge their electric vehicle, and they pay just about a third of their household electricity rate to do so. This means that if the customer plugs in their vehicle to charge when they get home from work at, say, 6:00 p.m.—a time when both demand and the carbon intensity on the grid are at their highest—their vehicle will then be smartly charged at the lowest cost and greenest periods throughout the night, which leaves it ready for when they need it in the morning. Behind Kaluza’s smart charging solution lies some sophisticated technology, all of which is built on Google Cloud. Their core optimization engine gathers real-time data from a wide range of sources, including battery and charging data from the electric vehicles, and data from the energy suppliers and grid operators, such as the carbon intensity, and price forecasts. That data is stored in BigQuery where it’s used to train and validate the smart charging optimization models. These models are then deployed with Google Kubernetes Engine so that whenever a customer plugs in an electric vehicle, data from that vehicle passes in real-time through their optimization engine to calculate the ideal charging schedule for that vehicle, which ensures that it uses the cheapest, least carbon-intensive energy available. And as for the grid operators and energy companies, the Kaluza platform lets them visualize how many participating electric vehicles are plugged into the network at any one time. BigQuery and Looker Studio dashboards provide granular insights, such as how many vehicles are idle, how many are charging, and how well our optimization engine is working. At Google, we remain committed to sustainability and continue to lead and encourage others, like Kaluza, to join us in improving the health of our planet.2. Let's practice!
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