Commercial, Finance  -  August 6, 2020

Google issues largest corporate sustainability bond

Google parent company Alphabet announced Aug. 3 that they have issued $5.75 billion in sustainability bonds, the largest by any company ever, that will fund projects in energy efficiency, clean energy, green buildings, clean transportation, circular economy, affordable housing and racial equity.

The bonds were issued as part of a $10 billion debt offering and by being labeled as “sustainability bonds” will be able to use the proceeds to fund social justice projects in addition to environmental ones. Eligible projects will fall under one of the eight categories listed above to build on investments they have previously made and will not be allocated to any Google.org activities.

Google has been carbon neutral since 2007 and has matched their electricity consumption with renewable energy for the last three years. The company has, to date, committed approximately $4 billion to purchase clean energy from more than 50 wind and solar projects through 2034 and have a longer-term goal to match all their energy consumption with clean energy for each of their global data centers on an hour-by-hour basis.

Additionally, Google has pursued energy projects that have made their data centers twice as efficient as a typical enterprise data center. Their data centers now provide around seven times as much computing power than they did five years ago while using the same amount of electricity.

Other energy projects have included the implementation of Google shuttles in the Bay Area, which has cut down on more than 40,000 metric tons of CO2 emissions by taking cars off the road, and pursuing LEED certification for more than 12 million square feet of Google offices.

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