Google Cloud has long touted its ambitions to power its global operations at all times with carbon-free energy (CFE) by 2030. Now the cloud giant is piloting a program for its customers to apply the same insights and strategies Google is using in its own efforts to ditch fossil fuels.

The pilot program's foundation in historical and real-time data, specific to region and granular to the hour, that will provide Google's cloud customers with the electricity emissions portfolio of their operations. The pilot will serve as a baseline for customers looking to plan for optimized energy portfolios and pursue CFE in the same manner as Google, according to the provider.

"While going carbon neutral and achieving 100% renewable energy have been major milestones, we recognize that addressing climate change will require doing more," Google's Head of Energy Development Maud Texier said in a media briefing.

In the traditional renewable energy approach, a company makes up for its non-renewable energy usage by supplying renewable energy to power grids anywhere in the world. But this means the energy it directly uses is still likely from traditional carbon-intensive power grids based on fossil fuels.

Google’s commitment, however, is to eliminate non-renewable energy sources for its own operations and fund green energy elsewhere.

The cloud giant plans to power its data centers and offices with continuous carbon-free electricity by 2030, meaning it will match each hour of its electricity consumption with CFE on every grid where the provider operates.

"And now we're helping build a global movement to make [CFE] a reality for all. ... The bigger picture role is to decarbonize electricity usage for all and for good," Texier said. "Our hope is to unlock the opportunity for as many organizations as possible to join the 24/7 movement to decarbonize the grid and accelerate net zero."

The provider also announced updates and expansions to its Carbon Footprint tool that allows its customers to measure, report, and reduce the emissions resulting from the use of Google Cloud services. The major update to the tool is the addition of scope-1 and scope-3 emissions to its reporting data.

"In the coming few weeks, in addition to accounting for our customers' scope-2 emissions associated with the production of the energy that we use, customers will also be able to access data on the emissions from the sources we control directly, as well as the relevant emissions of Google's scope 3 apportioned to customer usage," Justin Keeble, managing director of global sustainability, explained during the briefing.

This added functionality will offer "the most comprehensive view possible" of emissions associated with cloud usage, he added.

Another new expansion applies the principle of Carbon Footprint to Google Workspace. "For customers looking to understand the emissions associated with products like Gmail, like Meet, Docs, and others, this will provide a similar reporting functionality to those available in Carbon Footprint for Google Cloud," Keeble explained.

The provider is also launching a dedicated identity and access management (IAM) role for Carbon Footprint so non-technical Google Cloud users can access emissions data for tracking and reporting disclosures.