Google Makes $9.5 Billion Investment in US Data Centers, Other Buildings

The tech giant has vowed to go carbon-free by 2030, which will now make a $9.5 billion investment in data centres and other buildings in 2022 across the United States. Google has decided to put its money in 13 data centres in 13 states and facilities in 13 more states.

Google has taken several initiatives to expedite energy efficiency and energy transitions over the past many years, and data centres have always got high priorities in energy transitions.

Google claims that its data centres are more efficient than the industry standard and produce six times the computing data with the same amount of energy compared to five years ago. The company says it has a power usage effectiveness (PUE) of 1.10 compared to an industry average of 1.59, which means its data centres use about six times less overhead energy. According to Google, it has been carbon neutral since 2007.

Last year, Google formed a partnership with AES Corporation, which provides carbon-free energy to Google facilities in Virginia is one of the several projects Google initiated to keep its data centres energy efficient.

Google is not alone in this race to go carbon neutral in its operations. Facebook's parent company Meta initiated many projects in Kansas City and Idaho that it claims to be the most sustainable data centres worldwide. Comcast has initiated a project that adds 250 megawatts of solar energy, which will power 12 per cent of its operations. Equinix signed green bonds worth $1.2 billion to speed up green data centre developments.