“Google wants Asia to get serious about renewable energy”, 1 Nov 2017

…One area where…[Google] has devoted much time and resources to doing good is the environmental footprint of its operations... Google’s own footprint is also a challenge for the company. Google’s servers…are growing in electricity consumption by 20 per cent a year…Though Google has been carbon neutral since 2007, it wants to go a step further by...becoming 100 per cent renewable-powered... [and] this year [2017] is Google’s deadline for becoming fully renewable-dependent.

The company is investing US$2.5 billion in renewable energy projects, and currently procures about 2.6 gigawatts of renewable energy making it the biggest corporate buyer in history... [According to global director of data center energy and location strategy Gary Demasi, Google] can do three times the amount of computing with the same amount of energy as [it] could in 2010... "What we really want, particularly with respect to Asia, is the ability for any company of any size to be able to buy renewables. That will require new energy regulation mechanisms, the ability to negotiate deals directly with developers, and green energy credit programmes that verify that green energy actually is green."