Google Cloud Platform has announced new sustainability measures. Specifically, the company has unveiled its Carbon Footprint for Google Workspace (Carbon Footprint for Google Workspace). This initiative would officially arrive at the beginning of 2023and it’s an expansion to the measures that Google introduced last year.
But what is this tool and what exactly is it for? Well, Google wants you to be aware and Knowledge of how you use your tools and how it affects the environment. So while its initiative last year allowed agencies to track the carbon footprint of services like App Engine, Compute Engine, Kubernetes Engine and more; this has been developed specifically for Google apps.
This initiative is part of Google’s Carbon Sense suite. A) Yes, you can also review the carbon emissions of applications belonging to the Workspace. These would be Gmail, Drive, Docs, Calendar, Meet, and the rest that complement your work and productivity-oriented suite.
How does Google Workspace carbon emissions work?
While uploading files to the cloud, composing in Docs, and sending emails may seem like magic, there’s nothing magical about it. All these movements are stored on the huge Google servers. Therefore, it must maintain a constant power supply so that users can access them at any time. This, of course, creates a fairly significant carbon footprint, and as you use the company’s tools more, the number grows.
On this occasion, Google arrives to show you how much damage you do to the planet when using their services. Among the benefits of this program, we have the following:
- Effectively measure your gross carbon footprint. These measurements are based on the location of the emissions from your use of Google Cloud. In addition, they provide transparency regarding the emissions related to the own use of cloud applications.
- Track emissions profile across cloud projects. You will be able to monitor the gross emissions of the cloud, being able to see the variations over time, the region or the product used. This could help you improve your carbon footprint.
- Share the methodology with reviewers. This way you can verify that your data complies with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol.
On the other hand, those companies that are customers of Google they will be able to choose the servers where their data is stored. Thus, they can select some arranged by the company to be “low-carbon locations”, improving the effectiveness of these efforts to reduce the footprint.
At Google, we believe that the path to a sustainable future begins with the small decisions we make every day. However, industries, governments, and businesses are challenged to make these decisions without adequate data or information.
Even a small choice for an organization—which raw material to choose for a new product, when to proactively irrigate crops before a drought, which green funds to invest in—requires understanding unique and often complex information.
The slow progress to save the planet
Although it is an interesting tool that would help complement the fight against climate change, can feel quite sterile on a large scale. After all, it is nothing more than a counter that tells the user the carbon footprint generated by their consumption using Google services, but… what else?
No matter how many accountants the company includes, if they don’t get down to work to reduce the emissions produced by their equipment, we will achieve little. After all, that all users reduce their carbon emissions by 10 it’s not realistic; and that a multinational company of such a monstrous level as Google wants to “leave change in individual hands” leaves a bad taste in our mouths.
Unfortunately, climate change is something that cannot be solved on an individual level. not just because much of the carbon emissions are due to huge companies and transportation systems, but because it’s also unrealistic…unless you can control the decisions of every human being in the world—something impossible.
Nevertheless, Mountain Viewers get a point for actively thinking about curbing their emissions. In addition, one of its goals is to obtain energy from carbon-free sources by 2030. For now, however, it seems that we will have to settle for one step at a time, even if we are running out of time with each minute. What’s up.