Corporations Cooperate to Pave the Way to a Sustainable Future

Booster Blog

a sustainable future

With a strong plea for sustainable measures coming from all directions, big names are directing their forces towards the use of clean energy.

Corporation’s’ Cooperation!

Recently, giants in their industry Facebook Inc. and Microsoft Corp. have joined an entourage of environmental groups in all-out effort to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels.

The group, namely the Renewable Energy Buyers Alliance, are on a mission to deploy 60 gigawatts of renewable energy by 2025. In theory, it’s enough to replace all of the coal-fired power plants in the US which are expected to close in the next four years.

But how will they achieve such tremendous goals I hear you ask? The answer is by each company involved (with over 60 companies united for the cause) playing their part in a cooperative effort. The manager of sustainability at Microsoft, for instance, is leading an initiative to cut their carbon emissions by 9.5 metric tons.

Facebook are also pulling out all the stops, with a bid to get half of its electricity from renewable sources by 2018. The director of sustainability for the social media giant says they will eventually meet all of their needs with carbon-free sources. 

Project Sunroof

Google started as a search engine, through the years it has grown and rapidly developed in different industries. Now it can be seen spanning across all kinds of services. We use it to navigate from one place to another, perhaps soon we will use it to physically get from one place to another (see Google’s driverless cars), and now, it’s striving for solar sustainability. Whilst Google will not fit the solar panels themselves, they will offer you a reliable source of data that will aid you in your decision.

The project uses a unique set of data to estimate value of a solar set up. With all of the information from Google Maps, they certainly have the tools for the job, and could offer their services pretty much anywhere. It takes into consideration local weather patterns, the shade from nearby trees and buildings, and overall sunlight exposure to give you a ‘solar score’ for your rooftop.

You can see exactly how much money you would save and if it’s worth the investment in the long term. Ultimately this project is making it more accessible for people to go solar. Currently Google offer this service in 42 of the States in North America, having recently expanded.

It’s great to see the biggest names in the game doing what they can to ease the inevitable transition to renewable energy sources.