[rocketraman]

Unfortunately, there is indeed a lot of truth to the statement that it is a PR gimmick.

The problem with wind and solar is that they are intermittent. Therefore, Google's consumption at any particular moment in time cannot be supplied solely by these intermittent sources because their energy output never matches current demand (at least until some big honking batteries are built to level this out, for which the tech currently does not exist AFAIK -- no, Tesla's battery tech isn't even close to operating at this scale, though its a small step in that direction).

Therefore, Google must take power from the grid from non-intermittent sources that can ramp up and down based on demand, such as coal, gas, and nuclear. And this fact will remain true, even if Google had purchased wind and solar contracts for total energy many times greater than their total energy use.

So even though they may be purchasing contracts for wind/solar energy that exceed their own total energy use, they still cannot even approach viable operation without access to non-wind and solar sources, so its definitely misleading by Google to suggest they are running entirely on wind/solar.

Furthermore, the excess energy produced that Google purchased, but did not use because of the intermittency issue, actually reduces the efficiency of fossil and nuclear sources. Because the wind/solar energy is loaded onto the grid intermittently, it forces fossil and nuclear to cycle up and down to compensate. Just like city vs. highway driving, this is vastly less efficient.

[greglindahl]

Paying to have more renewable energy generated is not a gimmick, it's progress.

It's true that there's a storage problem to be solved. That doesn't mean that every single renewables project needs to solve it or become a gimmick.

[paul_f]

The problem is that Google's claim is deceptive. What they are doing is great.

[nostrademons]

I would bet that the article is inaccurate and the majority of this "renewable energy" is hydro. Google has taken great care to place its datacenters in locations that are close to affordable hydro power, and in many cases owns or has long-term exclusive leases on several power-generation plants within existing hydro dams.