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Snapshots

 

Google Sets
a Green Precedent

 

This June, Google Inc. vowed to go carbon neutral by 2008. The company will “green” its facilities as part of a strategy to help build a cleaner energy future.

Key components of the Google green strategy include:

• Cutting power consumption by more than half, starting with its data centers, which account for most of the energy Google uses;

• Increasing use of renewable energy. Google has finished the first phase of a 1.6 megawatt solar panel at its headquarters in Mountain View, CA, and has committed to creating an additional 50 megawatts of renewable energy generating capacity by 2012; and

• Offsetting emissions that cannot be eliminated directly.

Google is already involved in several projects that support smarter energy use, including:

• Investing in innovative projects—like plug-in hybrid cars—to make cleaner technologies commercially viable more quickly;

• Co-founding Climate Savers Computing, an industry initiative to increase computer efficiency and cut carbon emissions by 54 million tons a year by 2010;

• Enabling users to inform and engage the world on energy and climate change matters by using products like Google Earth and Google Transit; and

• Supporting public policy changes including energy efficiency and renewable portfolio standards, price signals for greenhouse gas emissions, and increased public spending on energy efficiency and renewable R&D.

 

David Radcliffe David Radcliffe, Vice President, Real Estate, Google, Inc.

60 Seconds with David Radcliffe, Vice President, Real Estate, Google, Inc.

As Google’s vice president of real estate, David Radcliffe is responsible for managing Google’s global real estate portfolio and workplace-related services. David joined Google in early 2006 from the Trammell Crow Company, where he was senior vice president of international operations. Immediately preceding that position, he served as group vice president of Real Estate and Workplace Services for PeopleSoft, Inc.

BF: We hear about Google data centers popping up around the world, but what other kinds of expansions do you handle?

David Radcliffe:These expansions fall into two general categories: people operations and technical operations.

People operations include sales, customer support, and engineering. Some recent examples are engineering offices we have opened in Kirkland, WA; Zurich; Pittsburgh; Bangalore; and Beijing. We’ve opened sales offices in Denver, Atlanta, Detroit, Dallas, and Chicago, and offices that combine our employee operations for a region, such as [in] London and New York. We also consider where we will need to be as our user and advertiser base grows, [hence] the offices we have opened in Johannesburg, Nairobi, and Dubai.

Our technical operations are primarily data centers. We have recently announced new projects in North Carolina, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Iowa, and Belgium.

BF: What are the deciding factors that Google uses to settle on a location?

Radcliffe: Locations are selected using a wide variety of factors, with every location being unique. For our people operations, we are focused on being located where we need to be in order to both attract the best talent possible as well as meet the needs of our users, advertisers, and publishers. An office’s specific location must absolutely contribute to this. Our goal is to provide a distributed network of offices around the globe to allow Googlers to pursue the lifestyle they want in the area they want to live while still being able to work on the challenging problems Google takes on everyday.

For our technical operations, we look for the right combination of infrastructure, available land and suitable workforce.

Dow Jones Sustainability Index Global Sector Leaders, 2007

Industry Company
Healthcare Novo Nordisk
Goods & Services TNTIndustrial
Food & Beverage Unilever
Financial Services Land Securities Group
Contruction & Materials Holcim
Chemicals Akzo Nobel
Basic Resources Norsk Hydro
Banking Australia & New Zealand Group Banks
Automobiles & Parts BMW
Travel & Leisure Sodexho
Utilities Cia Energetica Minas Gerais
Telecommunications BT Group
Technology Intel
Retail Marks & Spencer
Personal & Household Koninklijke Philips Electronics
Oil & Gas Statoil
Media Pearson
Insurance Allianz
Source: SAM Indexes, DJIA Annual Review September 2007

 

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