Google Says Will Use 100 Percent Renewable Energy by 2017

Search giant Google says it will use 100 percent renewable energy by 2017, according to a post on the company’s blog.

Google Senior Vice President of Technical Infrastructure Urs Hölzle saidrenewable energy will power Google’s data centers and offices around the world.

According to the post, Google uses incredible amounts of energy to process trillions of searches per year. On Google’s YouTube video platform, people upload 400 hours of video every minute, the company said.

“Our engineers have spent years perfecting Google's data centers, making them 50 percent more energy efficient than the industry average,” Hölzle wrote. “But we still need a lot of energy to power the products and services that our users depend on.”

He added that the company has been buying renewable energy since 2010 when it bought “all the electricity” produced by a 114-megawatt wind farm in Iowa.

“Today, we are the world’s largest corporate buyer of renewable power, with commitments reaching 2.6 gigawatts (2,600 megawatts) of wind and solar energy,” Hölzle wrote.

Google says the price of renewable energy is falling, citing that wind and solar have become 60 and 80 percent cheaper respectively.

Google said the company is involved in 20 renewable energy projects worldwide.