Google says it will have no net carbon footprint over its lifetime and aims to use only zero-emission energy by 2030

Google was at the forefront of big tech companies moving toward complete carbon neutrality, announcing the status in 2007 and matching its entire global electricity consumption to renewable energy. Now, the company says it’s blazing a trail by becoming the first major company to effectively eliminate its entire carbon footprint — going back to its founding — which it’s accomplished by purchasing “high-quality carbon offsets” to date. The company also has a goal of using 100 percent zero-emission sources by 2030.

The first achievement—eliminating its entire carbon footprint—is relatively easy to achieve by simply spending a lot of cash. Google hasn’t said exactly how much it’s bought in carbon offsets, but the idea is that you can buy support for projects, including renewable energy or energy efficiency initiatives, or projects that seek to offset its own impact. Google should have been more or less aware of the impact of its business from the time it was founded until it became carbon neutral in 2007, and hopefully its claim to have bought high-quality offsets means that it’s invested heavily in eliminating a lot of significant projects, whatever that number was.

Google, meanwhile, is taking on the much more difficult task of running its entire business on carbon-free energy everywhere it operates, 100 percent of the time. That means offices, campuses, and data centers everywhere, powering all of the company’s products across Gmail, Search, YouTube, and Maps. While Google already claims that its operations cover 100 percent of its energy consumption from renewable sources, it doesn’t actually do so through direct use of carbon-free sources. Instead, as is typical for companies seeking greener operations but with large and distributed physical footprints, Google is buying renewable energy elsewhere to offset its use of nonrenewable energy in places where there isn’t a direct source available.

Committing to using zero-carbon energy directly and at all times across its operations is therefore a huge undertaking that will require the actual development of new sources of clean energy. Google also says that by 2030 it will help bring online 5 GW of new, zero-carbon energy sources in regions with physical resources that require access to clean energy.

Funding the development of local, clean energy sources to power their facilities is nothing new, and most major tech companies with a clean energy agenda are pursuing it. But Google’s specific goal of making all of its energy sources carbon-free by 2030 sets a firm deadline for an unprecedented goal for a company of its size and influence.