Kate Brandt, Google Sustainability Officer:
A Green Recovery is “Absolutely Critical”

In her role as chief sustainability officer at Google, Kate Brandt is in charge of ensuring that one of the world’s biggest technology companies is operating in a sustainable manner. And while she argues that Google has already made considerable efforts on this front, including operating as “a carbon-neutral company since 2007”, she does see opportunities during this period of rebuilding.

“Green recovery is absolutely critical from my perspective, and I think that green jobs can play a really important role,” she says, pointing to the importance of renewable energy projects, and in particular the clout that corporate buyers can bring to this space.

“We're the largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy, and have matched 100% of our energy with renewables for the last three years in a row. And that procurement of renewables has enabled over $7bn in energy infrastructure to be built around the world, as well as the thousands and thousands of associated jobs.

“[That’s] a great indicator of the power of corporate renewable power buying and more broadly, building a clean energy economy and the job creation that can come with that.”

However, she also sees the global move towards sustainability as something that needs “everyone’s engagement”.

“Climate change is a critical and pressing global issue, and it requires the engagement of policymakers, businesses and individuals,” she says.

“But certainly, I think as we as we look ahead to Covid recovery, given the scope and the magnitude of this crisis, we cannot afford to do otherwise. And climate action will remain absolutely critical over the next decade.”

Beyond renewables procurement, Brandt sees technology and sustainability having a strong, collaborative role.

“We're particularly interested in where sustainability and design meet technology,” she says, pointing to the role of artificial intelligence (AI) as one area where she sees Google making particular strides in improving the environmental credentials of its data centres.

“We we run data centres around the world that make all of our products – search, Gmail, YouTube and the rest – available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And so we're constantly thinking about how we design and operate those data centres to be as efficient as possible,” she says.

“One of the more recent initiatives we've had has been around using machine learning and specifically [applying it to] the cooling system in the data centre where a lot of energy gets used.”

Here Google is using “an AI-powered efficiency recommendation system” that both reduces the company’s power demands and cuts operating costs.

“It takes data around power or temperature or pump speeds, and it's enabled us to drive a 30% increase in efficiency in that system,” she says.

“So that's been a great design-meets-the-role-of-technology-and-AI solution for us, and now we're excited to think about how we can bring this technology forward to our clients as well.”

This, supported by a number of other efforts, has meant that while the compute power of Google data centres increased by 550% between 2010 and 2018, the amount of energy consumed only grew by 6%.

“So nearly flat, not truly flat, but a very, very small growth in energy use compared to compute.”

Another area that Google is contributing to efforts on is air quality, a topic that has received considerable attention amid the pandemic.

Aside from the role it plays in emissions, poor air quality is a direct contributor to deaths, and can have severe impacts on childhood development. And with the world in lockdown, it has notably improved.

“There have been very near-term benefits that people have noted,” she says.

“Essentially, there's less nitrogen dioxide in the air with people commuting and travelling less and what we've started to see is, of course, those benefits are going to be short-term.”

Here, however, Brandt sees the scale and quality of data that Google is able to produce as being beneficial to ongoing efforts to improve air quality.

“Something that's really important to us at Google is how we can utilise our data and our platforms to provide insights during this extraordinary time, because we can see how air quality has changed,” she says.

“How can we do this in ways that are going to be particularly useful for policymakers and for communities as they're looking to drive change. And we've seen some of the key air quality mapping taking place on top of Google Earth Engine.”

This has seen numerous organisations utilise Google data to provide reliable information about air quality changes, which in turn are prompting changes to policy with tangible real-world impacts.

“We see such a huge opportunity to use our technology truly as an enabler,” says Brandt.

This is also moving beyond air quality and into wider emissions data for cities, in order to provide “big opportunities for policymakers” to enact meaningful change.

“Cities represent 70% of global climate emissions, and so we've worked hard to provide data and insights and we've created a tool called the Environmental Insights Explorer that provides building emissions data, transportation, emissions, data, solar potential of rooftops to give cities the tools that they need,” she says.

“So I think we've already done some good work in the space but we've truly only just begun and I think there's so much more opportunity for us in the role of enabling through our technology.”