Reduce Carbon emissions

Both Microsoft and Google have made fresh commitments to use renewable sources of energy in their data centers, reducing the carbon impact of their IT operations.

Microsoft and Google have made new commitments to reduce the carbon footprint of their IT operations through the use of renewable sources of energy in their data centers. In order to power its facilities in the UK, Google has entered into a power purchase agreement (PPA) with the French utility company Engie for 100 MW of energy produced by the Moray West offshore wind farm.

According to Google, the new agreements would help the business to nearer to its goal of completely running its cloud regions and UK offices on carbon-free energy by 2030. According to Matt Brittin, president of Google EMEA, consumers in the UK and Europe are growing more concerned about energy sources and climate change.

He stated that Google has similar worries and thinks technology will be crucial in resolving the energy crisis by lowering emissions both internally and externally.

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Microsoft, meanwhile, publicly disclosed PPAs in Ireland that encompass more than 900MW of brand-new renewable power capacity to operate its data centers there. Microsoft did not identify the providers for its renewable power contracts, but other media has named two of them as Statkraft of Norway and Energia Group of Ireland.

The energy is derived from a combination of solar and wind projects. The Redmond powerhouse predicted that by 2025, all of the energy used in its Irish data centers would be renewable and sourced from new initiatives backed by PPAs like these. Microsoft already agreed to a 20-year contract with AES Corporation to operate its data centers in California using renewable energy.

The action follows past agreements by both businesses to purchase US renewable energy. While Microsoft signed a 20-year agreement with AES Corporation earlier this year to supply renewable power to its data centers in California from a portfolio of 110MW solar and 55MW four-hour storage projects, Google struck a deal with SoftBank subsidiary SB Energy for 900MW of solar energy for a datacenter in Texas.

Although these initiatives have admirable goals, they won’t necessarily reduce the carbon emissions of these megacorps, particularly if they are growing more quickly than they are acquiring carbon credits or making investments in renewable energy.

For instance, Microsoft acknowledged in its sustainability reports report for 2021 that although its personal CO2 emissions had decreased by around 17% year over year, its carbon emissions had increased due to considerable expansion during the same time. Microsoft stated that in addition to growing its data centers to accommodate customers’ requirements, it has also increased its commitment to decreasing carbon use and assisting in the bigger climate change challenges.

The series of announcements is a boost for the commercial power purchase agreement (PPA) market in Europe, which wind and solar industry organizations claimed last month had experienced a year-over-year decrease during the first three quarters of 2022.