During COP21 in Paris, Climate TV spoke exclusively to Gary Demasi, Director, Operations - Data Center Energy and Location Strategy, Google about the company's low carbon business plans and its unique role as a global industry influencer.
Google joined RE100 with an interim target to triple its purchase of renewable energy by 2025. Google's goals were originally announced in June 2015 when the company signed the American Business Act on Climate.
Outlining why Google joined RE100, Gary Demasi says in The Climate Group's Climate TV interview: "We feel it is important to join specific industry coalitions that can push for common policy change and really mobilize around very key policy efforts to drive renewable energy forward.
"Low carbon strategies are very important, not only because at least for Google we feel that climate change is a real and potentially catastrophic issue for economies around the world, but we also do it because it make business sense."
The Director adds: "Essentially renewable energy is at parity from a cost perspective with what is already on the grid, so it actually makes business sense for the company. We wouldn't be doing this if it wasn't a smart thing to do."
Google is just the latest in a wave of the world's biggest ICT companies to join RE100, with Microsoft and Adobe also signing up to the campaign during COP21. The public demand for renewable electricity from these influential companies sends a clear signal to the market that transitioning to renewables is a common sense business decision.
"One of our objectives is to create a platform for other companies to follow. We really look for ways that are replicable and we are really pushing for policy change that provides other companies the avenues to do the same kind of things that we have done.
"We hope through our leadership that we're not simply doing this for Google. It is very important for us as a company, but we are also doing this truly for the betterment of our peers, and the betterment of industry in general, to create a real material change across our entire sector and other industries."