Sustainable with Google 2023
[Music] line [Music] hello everyone welcome to sustainable with Google we really appreciate your taking the time to to be here with us in Brussels as well as those of you who are tuning in on the live stream before we start today I did just want to take a moment to acknowledge the horrific civilian attacks that have taken place in Israel and the escalating conflict that is now underway our thoughts are with everyone who has been impacted by these recent events we at Google have a really long history in Israel and in fact many of the products we're going to be discussing here today were built by our teams who live and work there now at Google we deeply believe that the path to climate action it needs to involve everyone from organizations to governments as well as individuals and so during our time here together today we'll be announcing some exciting new Solutions sharing progress towards our climate goals and also continuing the conversation after the keynote for those of you are here with us in person so I'd now like to kick it over to a great message from our CEO Sarai hi everyone thanks so much for joining us whether you're in Brussels or joining virtually we are grateful for your partnership fighting climate change is Humanity's next big moonshot and as with any moonshot we're going to have to answer some big questions to get there at Google we've been asked asking these questions for 25 years can a company at our scale operate on 24/7 carbon free energy how can we use technology to help others achieve their climate goals and make more sustainable choices we continue to make progress across all of these areas for example behind me is our bayew campus in California where buildings are powered by wind solar and geothermal and in Belgium we are on on track to operate at or near 80% carbon- free energy in 2024 the biggest question is still ahead can we leave a healthy planet for future Generations I believe the answer is yes that's in part because of the progress being made globally to transition to a sustainable future we've worked hard to lead by example we began purchasing clean energy in 2010 by 2017 all our energy purchases were matched with 100% renewable energy and today 2/3 of the energy used for our offices and data centers is 24/7 carbon free our goal is to reach 100% by the end of the decade we are excited about the ways we can keep driving the energy transformation through steps like our next Generation geothermal project in Nevada which will be online soon we are also harnessing AI for new breakthrough solutions for example we recently shared research that will help Airline Partners use AI to decrease contrails a major contributor to global warming AI Powers flood up our system which can predict floods up to a week in advance it now covers more than 460 million people in 80 countries and I'm excited to share that starting today we are expanding flood up to the United States and Canada with the help of AI 1 billion people have made more sustainable choices through our products for example fuel efficient routing in Google Maps has helped prevent more than 2.4 million metric tons of carbon emissions that's the equivalent of taking about 500,000 fuel-based cars off the road for an entire year and in partnership with local governments we are ADV advancing project green light it uses AI to reduce stopandgo traffic at intersections and reduce emissions we are now expanding this project to more than a dozen cities around the world from Rio to Budapest through our products we want to help people cities and other partners collectively reduce one gigatons of carbon equivalent emissions annually by 2030 that's equal to the the emissions of a major country like Japan will continue sharing tools that help from making the latest AI models available through Google Cloud to helping City governments understand and reduce their emissions with our environmental insights Explorer to and we'll keep asking the big questions to help build a more sustainable future and work to find answers with all of you thanks again for being here I'll turn it over to the team to get started [Music] good morning uh my name is Ben Gomes and I've been at Google for a long time uh over 24 years now and most of the time I worked on search in various different capacities including leading the search team in the last year I took on a role leading sustainability efforts across the company and I joined various people who working in this area across the company including some people you're going to hear from today as I took on this role I realize that beyond our ability to decarbonize our data centers and our leadership in clean energy there are two ways in which Google can have a unique impact one is through our ability to organize information and second is through the power of innovation and research particularly in AI so information goes to the heart of our mission organize the world's information but what does this mean in the context of sustainability if you think about it the future will be built upon decisions made by people by cities by governments and those decisions will form the kind of future we have whether it's sustainable or not and if we can organize information to inform those decisions that people can make better decisions for a sustainable future that can have a significant impact and you can see this through our major products like search and Maps where people turn to us millions of times a day for decisions like what's a route that will save me with fuel or what sort of heating system should I use for my house and you can see collectively if we make those decisions well that can have a big impact these decisions are also made by cities and by governments and for cities we have a tool called in environmental insights Explorer which takes the aial imagery we develop for maps and combines that with AI in order to enable cities to see opportunities that they might not otherwise see for optimizing and building new infrastructure that is more sustainable we can't do all of this ourselves because the needs of Corporations and all are quite different and so we also provide tools like Google Earth engine as well as Tools in in Cloud that enable Business Leaders to create the solutions to enable more sustainable business practices that's what we can do in the area of information in the area of research we have a really rich tradition if you look at all the developments that have happened in AI recently many of them came out of work in Google research and that same approach can be applied to key problems in climate change and we'll be hearing about some of those approaches today these two things can also come together and you can bring together the power of organizing information with the power of AI to make that information more accessible to people and a great example of this was Data Commons which we launched two weeks ago together with the UN and that shows the power of organizing information making it accessible and here's a video that shows how that came to be every moment around the world people and organizations are generating data that can be extraordinarily useful and I think we have to find a way to harness that to solve problems the challeng has been a lot of these data sets are very fragmented most of society's complex challenges don't get solved with a single data source so this fragmentation gets in the way of being able to use the world's information to actually make a big difference to everybody everywhere Google's mission is to organize and make easily accessible all kinds of information we're doing it now for public data they've gathered standardized and process data from tens of thousands of tables from hundreds of reliable Global Sources and pulled it into one easily understandable view this is the fun part now comes Ai and natural language processing most people don't think in terms of Scatter Plots or variables of Interest or data points or triplets they think in terms of the question they want to ask of data now imagine if you could just simply ask the question in ordinary English and then you get back these graphs that help get you insights and that let you explore more deeply in sensible ways that ability to make data accessible and intelligent pragmatic practical at the organization level makes data Commons I think an essential tool for organizations as they're doing their work generative AI now Powers some of the most important functionality in data comments with large language models you can ask your questions and start getting answers imagine for example I'm a climate NGO and I'm trying to understand how access to electricity has changed across countries in Africa I'd search for it on data Commons from these charts we see that Kenya Somalia and Ghana have had some of the greatest increases in access to electricity I wonder what the impact of this on their greenhouse gas emissions has been from these charts we can see the Ghana's green greenhouse gas emissions have gone up substantially more than that of Kenya these observations are the beginning of a journey for us to better understand how we could increase access to things like electricity without proportionately increasing greenhouse gas emissions when it comes to actually taking action out of the insights from this data it's going to take people on the ground we also have to think about this responsibly so that's why doing this together and think about Partnerships collaborations I think is so so important it's these people who who have deep domain knowledge who know what the right questions to ask are who know what the right solutions to build are I'm really excited about the potential of data comment what other people can do with it too um you know research and information are really powerful tools but climate change is a huge problem and it can be daunting to know where to begin we've chosen two major themes transportation and energy because these are two areas that contribute the most emissions in the world today they also areas where we felt we could have the most impact we'll also be talking a little bit about adaptation because unfortunately in the world today there are more and more significant weather events to which the world has to respond and we're building tools to help with that this is not going to be easy it's a daunting problem not just for us but for the world but I've seen Google approach hard problems in the past and I really believe that with these tools and with this approach we can really be helpful in this fight against climate change with that let me hand over to Yale to talk about our effects our efforts in transportation elect I love my vehicle let's go have some fun do AO that is very impressive we need public transit to become lower carbon we are changing our public transit culture this battery can turn any bike electric we are doing the ebike Race doesn't look like a standard bike we're feeling hopeful about the future what we do matters thanks man the global Transportation sector produces a significant amount of the world's green greenhous gas emissions and it's a problem we believe technology like AI can help address from improving daily commutes to reducing the impact of flying let's start with one of the ways we're working with cities you know the frustration you feel when you hit you're in a rush and you hit red light after red light stopandgo traffic is bad for the climate too cars at City intersections generate 29 times more emissions than cars on an open road to help address this Google research created project Greenlight which leverages AI to help cities optimize traffic lights reduce emissions and make traffic flow more efficiently as Sundar mentioned today we are happy to share that this technology is now being used in 12 cities around the world from Rio de Janeiro to Manchester to Jakarta and we plan to scale to more cities in 2024 the idea here is to optimize not just one intersection at a time but to create what we call Green corridors waves of green lights at multiple intersections improving traffic flow and reducing emissions and stop andgo traffic throughout the city green light is more actionable scalable and cost effective for cities than alternative options because our AI based recommendations work with existing infrastructure and Traffic Systems so City Engineers are able to monitor the impact and see results within weeks I'd like to quickly share how this has helped a traffic engineer in Manchester so let's take a look city the size of G to Manchester we've got 2,400 traffic signals getting data for each of those points is a real challenge so the recommendations that came through the green light initiative were relatively small it was to reallocate a few seconds from one movement to another but the benefits which the initiative delivered were quite large the first was around data collecting data to understand how the network is performing and the second is around Engineers time we've got very limited Engineers resource they identified the locations where the engineer was more likely to deliver a benefit in refining changing those signal timings so at one of the locations where we implemented the changes we saw a 9% Improvement in the AM Peak and 18% Improvement inine the PM Peak so that's reduced emissions improved air quality so early numbers indicate a potential for up to a 30% reduction in stops in the intersections where green light is already alive this can save fuel and lower emissions for up to 30 million car rides monthly now let's talk about how people get sustainably around every day from heading to work to picking up groceries fuele efficient routing in Google Maps uses AI to suggest routes with fewer Hills less traffic and constant speeds with the same or similar ETA drivers can specify their engine type whether that's petrol diesel hybrid or electric so your route can be optimized to save the most fuel or energy for your trip and as you just heard from Sundar fuel efficient routing is estimated to have helped prevent more than 2.4 million metric tons of carbon equivalent emissions since launching in 2021 that's like taking approximately 500,000 fuel-based cars off the road for a year so far it's been available in places like Europe and the us and we work to develop models specific to the cars and unique driving patterns around the world but to bring this option to more people we'll start rolling out fuel efficient r ing in India and Indonesia this year and as part of that roll out we'll also be expanding fuel efficient routing to two wheelers in those two countries to help people travel more sustainably so now let's talk about choosing a car this is a big decision for everyone more and more people are considering EVS for the first time Glo Global EV related searches have nearly doubled over the past 2 years but there are many questions that come up when buying an e for the first time for example how far is a battery going to charge how long is it going to take you so that's why we've been working to revamp the car research experience on search so let me show you what's new first if you're starting to research for an EV you might search for a term like best electric C but now you can quickly compare factors like price and Battery range and cover new models that you might not have heard of yet you can even filter results further like by setting a price range so this new EV comparison tool is available now in the US and we plan to bring it to more countries in the future next we want to make it easy to understand the true cost of buying an EV New National incentives are rolling out in many countries but can it can be confusing to know which vehicles will qualify so for qualifying EV models we'll show Federal incentive information right in search this is already live in the US and we'll start showing government incentives in France and Germany by the end of the year so beyond the purchase price many of us don't know how the cost of charging compares to filling at the pump so we're adding an updated fuel cost calculator to electric and fuel-based car results this is now available in 21 countries around the world finally there's the common question that people have around driving range I'm an EV owner myself and I know that range anxiety is real to help we built a new battery range Explorer in search so now when you search for an eeve you'll get a visualization of how far you can go on a charge you can specific to that model so we'll even show you how much battery range you'll have upon arrival you can enter your own destination so for example it could be your favorite vacation spot or friend's home and if it's a really long trip we'll show you how many charges are needed along the way this prediction takes into account factors like elevation change and speed limits the battery range Explorer is rolling out in the US now and coming to to Europe early next year we hope this makes it easier to decide if an EV works for you we've been talking a lot about cars but we also want to help you consider alternatives to driving that could save you time or money and reduce emissions at the same time so to help make cycling easier for more people we've been working with local governments to ensure Google Maps shows upto-date cycling routes for example this year we collaborated with organizations like Transport for London to add hundreds of kilometers of new bike lane data to Maps thanks to insights from these organizations we've been able to prioritize cycling on safer quieter roads and these updates are now available to cities around the world we're also showing new coloring on bike routes to show where bike lanes are so that you can know what to expect at a glance in total these changes are improving the journeys of more than 60 million people who come to Maps every month for cycling directions so looking at directions we give in Google Maps one in 10 car trips in Europe could be taken by walking or Transit and arrive within 5 minutes of the same time as driving in France we've been working with the government on their initiatives to provide alternatives to driving coming soon to Maps users in France we're piloting a feature to provide alternatives to driving so when you search for driving DEC uh directions Google Maps will analyze public transit and walking routes and suggest them alongside your driving route if they're practical and comparable in the same time this feature will make it easier for people to discover and make more informed sustainable travel decisions every day now of course sustainable travel isn't just about local trips we're also working to make long-distance travel more sustainable one of the ways we're doing this is to help people find alternatives to Flying for example say you search for flights from Madrid to Barcelona that's the most traveled Air route in Europe but there are High-Speed Rail options that are only an hour longer than the shortest flight so when considering time price carbon emissions rail can often be the better choice soon we'll show relevant train routes when people search for flights in Google search so Travelers can understand all their options but there's also times when flying is the best or only option and that's where we're working with Partners on new approaches to reduce warming for example contrails those thin white lines that you sometimes see behind aircraft account for 35% of aviation's global warming impact our go our Google research team has been working with breakthrough energy using AI to develop contrail forecast Maps Pilots can then choose routes that avoid contrails like by changing altitudes we tested these predictions in real in the real world in collaboration with pilots from American Airlines and succeeded reducing more than half of the contrails this was the world's first proof point that contrails can be avoided by commercial aircraft So today we're excited to announce a new partnership with Euro control who manages the airspace over Belgium the Netherlands Luxembourg and the Northwest Germany it's one of the busiest airport airspaces in the world so now Euro control will be able to provide any aircraft flying through this airspace with information about how to avoid contrails we look forward to sharing the results with you overall there's so much opportunity for technology to give people more sustainable options without significant cost or time trade-offs we're going to continue to work to reduce the emissions of the transportation sector in partnership with policy makers and Industry leaders around the world I'd like to now pass it over to Kate to talk to about how we're helping people save energy and accelerate the transition to [Music] Renewables we need to fix the way that we stay cool there is something that we can do about it this thing was my personal savior there are a lot of options for solar systems at home we get to make all of our own power right here heat pumps are such an amazing idea they're eco-friendly appliances that can save you money and help save the planet thanks J outside of Transportation the energy sector accounts for over 60% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions according to climate watch energy is at the heart of the climate change but it's also key to the solution more organizations cities and people are looking to trans to clean energy and we want to help at Google we've an opportunity to help people at those critical moments like when they're looking to save on their energy bills or deciding on a new appliance which might last them for 10 years or more last winter people across Europe came to Google with questions about the energy crisis search interest for energy crisis hit an alltime high in 2023 and so that's why we partnered with the International Energy agency to show energy saving tips right in Surge together we reach more than 15 million people helping to reduce their energy consumption as well as save money now we know that reducing energy usage alone isn't enough how we heat and cool our homes matters too but making sense of the options can be really overwhelming from navigating the financial incentives and total costs to understanding those efficiency ratings and then we out for need those systems on really short notice like when our boilers give up in the middle of winter or our air conditioning stops working during a record-breaking Heat Wave So today we're launching a new experience on Google search that makes it easier for people to learn about and compare heating and cooling systems so when people search for things like boilers or air conditioning they'll see information about potential options including their capabilities and efficiencies and those financial incentives all in one place this is available now in the US and France thanks to data from energy star and energy.gov as well as the
International Energy agency we'll bring it to more people in Europe this winter helping people businesses and cities Source clean energy is also a critical part of the clean energy transition and solar is going to play a really significant role here accounting for 2/3 of 2023 is projected increase in global renewable energy in fact on search we saw interest in rooftop solar power increase 60% on Google and we're working to accelerate rooftop solar deployment with new tools for both solar installers as well as cities around the world earlier this year we launched our solar API making detailed rooftop data available to businesses to estimate rooftop s solar energy potential as well as those Energy savings so for example a solar installer can use the API to see detailed solar information for an area look at individual buildings to see which will receive the most sunlight and even get a recommendation for which direction those solar panels should face the solar API has information for more than 320 million buildings worldwide including 112 million buildings in the UK France and Germany and for urban planners we're making it easier for facilities to better incorporate solar into their development plans today we're introducing a new feature in Google Earth which will make it easier for planners to determine the best building designs and solar options for built-up areas it's especially helpful when optimizing designs for places with ample spaces like car Parks this will help cities plan for development with the right information to meet their sustainability goals the preview is currently available in the us and we're planning to expand coverage in the coming months one of the biggest barriers to Bringing more clean energy online is the complexity of connecting it to the grid governments and utilities need to use sophisticated models to do so s safely but it can be a really slow and painful process with barriers like aging infrastructure and severe weather events causing delays so that's why we started tapestry as an alphabet project it helps grid operators map their Network to better plan for a decarbonized future our AI based tool allows them to better model scenarios like taking a coal-based plant offline or predicting how a clean energy source could be impacted by an extreme weather event we've been developing tapestry with Chile's National system operator who has an ambitious Target to operate 100% renewable grid by 20 2030 even in its early stages tapestry has helped them run scenarios much more efficiently they can now run 12 times more future scenarios than they could with previous tools our partner in Chile recently visited the tapestry team uh and he shared a few thoughts let's see what they said we know that uh if we really want to accelerate the transition we need to integrate new technologies and new technologies that are going to help us to do our work in a better way so there's there's no way we can do it with the current tools the discussion with tapestry was a little bit different so basically they approach to us and say okay you know where are your biggest problems you know what are you trying to sh where are your major challenges to accelerate the the energy transitions so what we're trying to achieve here is just to build the the next level of software that is going to help us basically to analyze uh the grid with much more information more accurate and with a lot of more scenarios so that we can take better decisions both on the planning looking at the long term but also on the day-to-day operations you know at the control room this is just the beginning given how critical this work is tapestry is focused on using those learnings from Chile to help other Energy Partners around the world evolve their grid more responsibly so now let me pass it to Yosi who's going to share with us the role that technology can play in adaptation and our efforts to help prevent or minimize the effects of climate [Music] change adaptation measures range widely from installing fountains and cities to combat Rising heat to constructing seaw walls to prevent flooding what are we doing to prevent Wildfire smaller fires can hope for us be more resilient we can still go down a different path we can use AI to develop complex climate models disaster models can help us Mount more effective responses trees help us filtering the air we breathe and cooling the climate it's the most exciting thing in the world thank you Kate I'm pleased to be able to join all of you here today in Brussels from my hometown Tel Aviv before I start I would like with the greatest personal sorrow and pain to pay tribute to my men to the many hundreds of Israelis of all ages including families killed in the horrific tur IST attack in Israel and to those still abducted and missing situation is still ongoing and wish them all to be safe home I want to acknowledge my colleagues who are in Israel right now many of whom contributed to the work you'll hear about today it's an incredibly difficult time for all of us and I'm grateful and proud to share the work with you we talked about uh ways we're reducing emissions to slow the progress of climate change but its effects are already here impacting all of us particularly in the most vulnerable communities Google is often the first place people turn to for information as climate Chang in testifies people are searching for events like wildf fars and monsoons more than ever for events like these timely information is critical to help minimize damage and loss of life our goal is to provide useful actionable information to individuals to today and Empower communities to plan and build resilience in the long term today I'd like to share how we're helping with floods wildfires and extreme heat every year floods cause thousands of fatalities worldwide disrup the lives of millions and causing significant financial damages since 2018 we've made progress applying AI to forecast River and floods by building breakthrough Global hydrological AI model and combining it with with publicly available data sources we are able to predict floods up to 7 days in advance earlier this year we announc that we are providing forecasts on our flood Hub platform in 80 countries covering 460 million people today we're making River and flood forecast available in the USA and Canada covering more than 800 sites by rivers that more than 12 million people live a organizations governments and people can use this information to better prepare our long-term goal and ambition is to scale further and cover more types of floods Wildfire paus an equally difficult challenge I experienced the wildfire in 2010 when one broke out in the caramel mountain in Israel near our Google office but there was no helpful information available online and we didn't know if we needed to evacuate we understood how critical it is to get the right information to people and help them stay safe and this led to creating SOS alerts in Search and maps with timely authoritative information about major crisis so far this year we've activated SOS alerts for 120 Wildfire events helping 30 million people stay safe and informed we're also researching how AI can help track fires and predict how they will spread leveraging Ai and satellite imagery our Wildfire boundary tracker Maps the boundary of large scale fires with updates every 15 minutes this is already live in parts of the US Canada Mexico and Australia and we're working to expand coverage in more to more countries in addition to knowing where wild wildfires currently exist fir farters need to anticipate where they will go and even how to prevent them before they start we are collaborating with the US Forest Service to make the biggest updates to their fars spread model in 50 years this will use machine learning to help fire authorities prevent and battle large scale fires more safely and efficiently finally extreme heat it's been reported that this past summer was the hottest on record and heat related deaths are under rise to help we launched extreme heat alerts in August in 80 countries when people search for information they see details on when a heat wave is predicted to start and end tips on staying cool and related health concerns to be aware of from the global heat Health Information Network cities are also looking for ways to prevent heat Islands which are urban areas that experience higher temperatures due to structures like roads and buildings that absorb heat and Reit it Studies have shown that planting trees to for shade and reflecting roofs can reduce the city's air temperature by 2 to four degrees Celsius in the summer months yet local authorities often lack data to guide their efforts or make the case for investment our tree canopy tool part of our environmental insights Explorer combines Ai and AAL imagery to help cities better understand where to plant more trees we're also expanding tree canopy data to more than 2,000 cities globally we're also piloting a cool roofs tool across 15 cities in the coming weeks places like New York York Nashville and Melbourne will be able to use Ai and ARL imagery to map our solar reflectivity of their cities so urban planners and governments can identify what areas would benefit most we know there's more work to do and are committed to continuing to advance our AI research boldly and responsibly working in collaboration with cities governments NGO and the UN early warnings for all initiative to help more people around the world with that let me pass it back to Kate thank you so much y so before we wrap up our keynote I did want to spend just a few minutes talking about how we're working to operate Google more sustainably so we're doing this in four key ways first accelerating the transition to a net zero future also advancing water stewardship building a circular economy and protecting nature and biodiversity in 2021 we set our most ambitious goal yet which is that we want to achieve net zero emissions across all of our operations and value Chain by 2030 and as a part of this we have a goal to run both our data centers and our office campuses on 24x7 carbon free energy or CFE on every grid where we operate and last year 20 of our grid regions achieved at least 85% and since we started building our data centers it has been a really big priority for us to operate them as energy efficiently as possible and we've done this even as compute demand has increased really substantially so of course with AI at an inflection point this continues to be a really big priority for us and predicting the future growth of energy use and emissions from AI compute is challenging but what we do have is tested best practices that we've been using to reduce the carbon footprint of workloads and these practices have enabled us to reduce energy of training models by 100x and Emissions by up to a,x so our plan is to continue using these tested best practices and also to keep developing new ways to reduce and make AI more efficient now we also know that climate change is causing water stress increasingly in more parts of the world and so we are committed to responsible water use we aim to replenish 120% of the fresh water volumes we consume across our offices and data centers by 2030 now additionally we know that research shows that we cannot achieve net zero emissions without accelerating the transition to a more circular economy and so one of the ways that we're doing this is by keeping our products and materials in use for longer and this includes Chromebooks as well as pixel phones so recently we announced that Chromebooks will now receive 10 years of updates and this is more than any other operating system promises additionally we're expanding our pixel phone support to 7even years and this includes OS upgrades security updates and feature drops and this will start with the new pixel 8 and then lastly when it comes to Nature and biodiversity wherever possible we strive to build biodiversity onsite at our offices and our campuses by designing ecology and bringing nature back to cities so at bayie where Sundar joined us in the video earlier in our program this is the most comprehensive example we have yet of our approach to designing for Ecology so we have already covered a lot of ground today we shared how we're using our products and our research to help reduce emissions in transportation from car trips to Aviation and also how we are accelerating the transition to a clean energy future in our homes as well as across power grids now this includes things like project Greenlight which uses AI to optimize traffic lights across cities and also Google search features that make it easier for people who are searching for EVS or new ways to cool and Heat their homes we also highlighted how AI can be used to help both governments and people who are already dealing with the impacts of climate change and this includes expanding flood Hub platforms to cover more communities leveraging ml to help firefighters as well as expand expanding Upon Our work on extreme heat so for me sustainability has been a lifelong passion and preserving our planet for future Generations it's an extremely personal thing I spent a lot of my childhood uh growing up in Northern California outdoors and now I have the opportunity to raise my little daughter in this same special place but it is also being impacted by climate change just like so many parts of the world are so our role our opportunity is to combine the energy and optimism and ambition with power of information and Innovation at scale thank you all so much for joining us today we're going to continue this important conversation here in Brussels with some great speakers that we'll look forward to hearing from soon thank you again
2023-10-21 17:01
