[PETER SPACEY & DANNY FEELS, "FEEL"]
VALERIYA SHIN: Have you ever been
thinking about how to integrate sustainability
into your business values?
Stay tuned to find out how Google Cloud can help.
ELLA GRIER: Hi, I'm Ella.
VALERIYA SHIN: And I'm Valeriya, and we're both customer
engineers here at Google Cloud.
Welcome back to the "Technical Guides for Startups,"
a video series where we help startups to start, build,
and grow their business successfully
and sustainably on Google Cloud.
In the previous video, we looked into the Looker product family
and showed you how to explore, analyze, and share
business insights.
Today, at our Start at Zero guide,
we will cover how you can optimize your business
sustainability by starting with net zero technology admission
or starting your move towards net zero.
ELLA GRIER: We are going to cover why sustainability
matters and why it is an important consideration
for your business.
We will share Google's sustainability strategy
operating as the cleanest cloud in the industry.
We'll cover how Google Cloud supports you
on a sustainability journey through two key pillars,
digital sustainability and operational sustainability.
And we'll show you what this looks like in the Google Cloud
Console.
And we'll also take a look at an example of one of our customers
who is partnering with Google Cloud to start at zero.
VALERIYA SHIN: All right, let's start
with a key question to answer--
why sustainability matters.
Sustainability has three main pillars--
economic, environmental, and social.
To achieve sustainability, we need
to balance all those factors with equal harmony.
In business, sustainability is about doing business
without negatively impacting the environment, community,
or society as a whole.
Out of many, there are two key reasons
startups should think about sustainability topic.
The first and often more compelling for
business is that there is a consumer demand, and therefore,
investor demand.
Both consumers and investors are making purchase and investment
preferences based on environmental impact.
Retail and institutional investors
are building sustainability metrics into their risk
modeling and prefer investing in brands that have sustainability
commitments.
And the second reason is we are living
in a pivotal decade in the fight against climate change, which
gives startups and new businesses an opportunity
to take responsibility and chart a sustainable
course for our planet in response to climate change.
The trend is clear.
There is more need for computational power
than ever, particularly with an emerge and growth
of Web3, Internet of Things, data, and millions
of users starting their journey with the cloud every month.
More demand ultimately means more servers and therefore
more energy.
Data centers in particular have proven
to be an area where innovation can have a major impact.
For example, in our own data centers in 2020,
we had seven times the compute for the same amount
of electricity we once used in 2015.
And for this reason, we continue to have sustainability
as part of our core mission.
At Google, we strive to build sustainability
into everything we do, for everyone,
every Googler, every user, every product, every partner,
and every community.
From product design to manufacturing and supply chain
operations, Google is working to deliver the tools
and technologies that provide the data and insights for more
sustainable decision-making so together we
can address environmental and social impact
at every step of the journey.
As of the beginning of 2023, Google
is operating the cleanest cloud in the world.
This is an example of Google's goal
that we're passing on to businesses that
choose to build with Google.
Efficient data centers help us better serve our users
in a more sustainable way.
Google data centers are twice as efficient as the industry
average for enterprise data centers.
We also optimize our data centers' cooling system with
our own machine learning technology.
When it comes to controlling data centers,
they're unique beasts--
millions of components that are relatively fickle to change
in their environment.
Every five minutes, our AI system
grabs a snapshot of thousands of centers.
It feeds the inputs to neural networks,
which predict potential outcomes of different actions and best
adjustment.
This focus on energy efficiency cascades into the services
that you can get from Google Cloud
and therefore offer to your end customers.
Google was the first major company
to become carbon neutral in 2007.
Then, in 2017, Google became the first major company
to achieve 100% renewable energy,
which means that compute, data, and machine learning workloads
which powers your business on Google Cloud
have zero net emissions.
But we don't want to stop there.
Our moon shot is to power all of the operations
24/7/365 on renewable energy in the same grid
as the energies consumed.
Our next goal is to operate carbon-free 24/7 by 2030.
And by doing this, we enable businesses
by default on Google Cloud to hold their green technology
page.
Learn more about Google's commitment
to sustainability at sustainability.google.
ELLA GRIER: In line with our sustainability strategy,
Google Cloud seeks to support you on your own sustainability
journey.
How do we do that?
Well, we think about sustainability in two domains.
Firstly, we help your business to adopt technology
that reduces the immediate impact of your IT operations
and lowers the associated emissions.
The work we've done on our own data centers
effectively reduces the emissions
of your IT infrastructure.
We call this digital sustainability.
And then, secondly, we help organizations
to use our extensive data sets, the data
processing capabilities of Google Cloud,
and our ecosystem of partners to help reimagine your operations
and processes to reduce your own carbon emissions.
We call this operational sustainability.
So how do you view and track your digital sustainability
on Google Cloud?
Well, there are three key ways you can do this.
The first is with Google Cloud Carbon Footprint,
which can be accessed directly from your Google Cloud Console
and provides you with an overview of the gross emissions
of your cloud infrastructure.
You can measure and visualize these emissions per project,
location, or Google Cloud product,
and easily export this data to BigQuery for your business's
carbon accounting.
It's available to all Google Cloud users for free.
From Cloud Carbon Footprint, you can
launch into Recommendations, which
will take you to our Active Assist sustainability
recommendations.
Active Assist uses advanced analytics and machine learning
to identify idle projects and evaluates their impact
on carbon footprint, then produces
recommendations to help you reduce your IT carbon
footprint.
And, lastly, whenever you are spinning up a new resource,
whether it's Compute Engine, BigQuery, or Cloud Run,
our Region Picker helps you to optimize for price, latency,
and carbon footprint when choosing
where to run your new workload.
VALERIYA SHIN: Let's talk about operational sustainability.
We have and continue to build Google Cloud's solutions
to help our customers across all industries
to make informed decisions and promote healthier
outcomes for the planet.
Meet Google Earth Engine.
Over the past decade, academics, scientists, and NGOs
have used Google Earth Engine and its Earth observation data
to make meaningful progress on climate research,
natural resources protection, carbon emissions reduction,
and other sustainability goals.
Now, with the power of Google Cloud
and intelligence of Google Earth Engine,
we are helping companies with responsible management
of natural resources while building sustainable business
practices that cut costs and comply with regulations.
Earth Engine combines a 70-plus petabytes catalog
of satellite imagery and geospatial data sets
with planetary-scale analysis capabilities.
And, of course, a trusted community with 50,000
sustainability-focused monthly active users--
a great opportunity to join the community
focused on sustainability, social and environmental
impact.
Today, Google Earth Engine serves users from science
to operational business decision-making.
For 30 years, we have been collecting
petabytes of Earth science data to process using algorithms.
The Earth Engine API is available
in Python and JavaScript, making it
easy to harness the power of Google's
Cloud for your own geospatial analysis.
And it remains at no cost for non-profit, non-commercial,
and research projects.
As two examples, Global Forest Watch and US Forest Service.
Global Forest Watch offers the latest data, technology,
and tools that empowers people everywhere
to better protect forests.
USFS reduces time to complete mission-critical tasks
from months to hours with Google Earth Engine's superior data
catalog and scalability.
With Google Cloud's comprehensive platform,
industries can solve for common environmental and climate risks
at scale.
It starts with leveraging Google's geospatial data
and applying Google's advanced AI and ML capabilities
to identify the impact of sustainable business practices
on their top and bottom line and on the planet.
And if you wanted to see a real-life example of Earth
Engine power in action, let's take a look
at Unilever, a global consumer goods company.
Unilever wanted to know what percentage
of their raw materials are sourced
from deforestation-free suppliers
and how they can improve that number.
Until recently, many brands have found
it hard to get real-time, reliable visibility
into operations at the local supplier level globally.
Unilever and Google Cloud teamed up
to help advance sustainable business practices using
cloud computing, satellite imagery, and AI
to build a more holistic view of the forests,
water cycles, and biodiversities that intersect
Unilever's supply chain.
ELLA GRIER: If you've gotten to the end of this video,
and you still want to learn more about sustainability
with Google Cloud, here are a few steps you can take.
Firstly, visit sustainability.google
and google.cloud.com/sustainability.
Check out our hands-on guides and walkthroughs
in the description below.
Look into our Accelerator Program, Climate Change Europe,
and, lastly, reach out and get connected with someone
from Google Cloud.
Next up, we'll be looking into how
you can scale your databases globally
with Google Cloud Spanner.
The session will cover some common challenges
with traditional databases and how Google Cloud Spanner
overcomes those challenges.
We'll look at when you should consider scaling your databases
as well as migration and pricing options.
And we'll demonstrate how to get started with Google Cloud
Spanner.
VALERIYA SHIN: Don't forget to like and subscribe
to our YouTube channel.
Click on the bell icon to get notified each time
a new video is posted.
Thank you.
Stay tuned, and we will see you very soon in the next video.
[PETER SPACEY & DANNY FEELS, "FEEL"]