CHAPTER SIX
CONCLUSION
The 2018 report from the IPCC warned everyone that if serious steps are not taken in the ongoing climate crisis, issues of land mass reduction and warming rates will only continue becoming extreme problems (IPCC, 2018). The time to act with “dire urgency,” to take serious steps in reducing carbon emissions and being mindful of consumption, is now (IPCC, 2018). For corporations, it becomes increasingly important to understand how the companies discursively construct their sustainability. Google has been disclosing their commitments and values for many years now and I chose Google as the company of study in this thesis because they are outpacing their competitors in renewable energy acquisitions. This thesis analyzed Google’s public-facing documents using critical discourse analysis as a framework to understand how the company positions itself and expresses the relationships between their infrastructures, data centers, and finite resources in the ongoing climate crisis. I chose to use critical discourse analysis of public-facing documents, including relevant EPA and joint reports with outside agencies, because I wanted to build articulations between energy, various policies, and how the company positions itself to their role in the climate crisis. In particular, I wanted to analyze definitions of ‘renewable energy,’ specifically related to their data centers.
This analysis revealed that the company acknowledges that the climate crisis is a problem for which they do need to act, and they have dedicated multiple spaces to delivering transparent reports and plans through which they express their goals, commitments, innovation, and efficiency that is, according to them, unmatched across the industry. Google positions itself as committed to sustainability from the beginning, as benevolent, as committed to efficiency, and as a hero for the climate crisis. They discursively pride themselves in being the best option for consumers because of their innovation, scale, and financial portfolio. At the same time, however, recent events (Lutz, Dec. 2019; Newcomb, 2018; Lutz, 2019; Lutz, Dec. 2019) indicate there are limits to their benevolence and activism, especially with financial donations to climate change denying organizations, the recent firings of activist employees who demanded more and that company stopped serving clientele in the fossil fuel industry. Google remains committed to the bottom line in an economy that praises sustainability as practical capitalism, masking retroactivity under the guise of activism. There are limits and dangers to such notions; however, Google does not seem to address them in their materials and consumers may not be aware of them.
Limitations and Directions for Future Research
Google is a global corporation, and the scope of this project was limited to the United States, so policies, public materials related to European data centers, for example, were not explored. This thesis chose to emphasize US policy and sites because the sheer number of documents would have fallen outside the confines of the project. Additionally, this analysis did not specifically focus on any particular data centers, and there are differences between them, especially between the newer projects and older ones and the locations of the data centers across the United States. Additional limitations in this project include not visiting the data center sites, not interviewing employees or personnel in renewable energy or of affiliation with Google to understand their experiences or beliefs about the company’s commitments. Even more broadly, limitations in scope meant also not comparatively analyzing Google’s discourse to the discourse of their competitors. In the future, research projects should consider addressing the items not included in this thesis because they would continue helping to understand how Google uses sustainability as a complex, discursive value in a variety of ways. These areas include whether or not they are as progressive in sustainability as they promote themselves to be, if competitors are looking to Google for guidance, what Google is doing well, gaps in energy policy between the United States and countries around the world, or perhaps other economic incentives for sustainability across the industry. There are many more pieces to the puzzle and these are important current discourses to articulate because of the pressing nature of the climate crisis.
Since energy and power grids are complex and challenging to understand as an outsider, I have many unanswered and related questions which can serve as the baseline for carrying out such future projects. How does matching the energy Google consumes by adding additional renewable projects to the power grid account for the physical resources like water required to cool their servers? Water is an incredibly essential resource, and it was interesting how it was not present in many of the documents analyzed, and instead briefly mentioned it as “cooling” that is part of the “overhead energy” calculation (Google Data Centers, n.d.-a). How does the existence of obsolescence in technology impact the finite materials required to build the very servers Google relies on and innovates for efficiency (Google, n.d. -c)? How can the company be truly sure of the renewable energy particles they acquire are truly “matching” the energy they require to function in all locations, and how can they ensure those projects they invest in are actually manifesting tangible results? Additionally, while Google certainly appeared to be committed through their partnerships and organization memberships like REBA for government regulation, there were no mentions of explicit desires for national regulation of energy practices. If the U.S. government did require certain regulatory energy standards for technology companies like Google, would this lessen the company’s ability to describe themselves as an environmental champion or the best option for those seeking cloud services? What would Google lose if all companies were required to operate in standardized, responsible ways? One may argue that since they have already promoted outperforming the PUE industry standard (Gao, 2014; Google Data Centers, n.d.-a; Evans & Gao, 2016), they would seek to best their competitors still. Since efficiency does appear to play an impactful role in the company’s part in the climate crisis, would such standards actually still be useful? If every company, especially in light of the more recent proclamations by Larry Fink of BlackRock, dedicates themselves to reducing their impact, does efficiency and sustainability become the standard expectation? If so, what will happen to Google’s work to position themselves in a very particular way?
These questions could not be reasonably addressed in the scope of this thesis. However, my critical discourse analysis led me to ask these questions. Before starting this project, I did not understand renewable energy, or what key phrases I should be aware of, or what the processes of sustainability look like as described by Google. Without immersing myself in the documents and using them to build articulations between company commitments and the renewable energy market, for example, it would be difficult to understand what questions still need answered. The analysis in this thesis is important as researchers assess the role data centers play in the climate crisis, but more importantly, the ways the companies discursively attempt to address their role in it.
This project began after I found myself wondering why the Internet — the very platform that enables so many campaigns, news, and information about climate change— was itself so damaging to the environment. Admittedly, each of the sections for this project were stored and written using the Google Drive cloud service. I, like so many, rely on the Internet each day and I do not wish to, as Raymond Williams wrote, “give up this power” (1959, p. 97). This analysis revealed to me that search engines and cloud service providers are beginning to make bigger strides in being aware of and reducing their environmental impacts. My understanding of Google as a company has given me glimpses of hope, but each glimpse is measured with lingering concerns and questions. If a company like Google issues press releases, posts materials and reports related to their commitments on separate websites and blogs, it could appear on face-value that they are doing enough or more than is currently required in their efforts. I fear that Google winning awards for their efforts in Renewable Energy, their investments, and their recognition as a leader in innovation will give the faulty perception that they are the best standard or possible scenario for the industry. I believe that such optimistic consumerism, especially for a company that positions itself as benevolent, will not result in not being held to even higher standards. From the materials comprising the server chips in each of the servers housed in the data centers to the water that is required to cool them, Google relies on vast resources. Google is acquiring RECs and PPAs at rates outpacing their competitors, and more work is necessary to explore what such acquisitions do for the market of Renewable Energy beyond what may be disclosed in Google materials. These are complicated articulations but they are necessary ones to study because they have helped to make cloud technology an essentially banal technology, one which recedes to the background of daily life while it continues to impact global energy resources.
While I am skeptical that companies are taking enough steps to meet the dire urgency of the climate crisis we are facing, I do remain hopeful that change is still possible. As cultural studies scholar, Lawrence Grossberg, wrote, “we have to imagine a world in which many worlds can exist together. And we have to figure out what is going on, and how it has, for so long, prevented us from moving toward more humane realities” (Grossberg, 2010, p. 294). This project offers a means of understanding what is going on between Google, their data centers, and the finite resources they require. This project offers findings that are consistent with analysis conducted by a researcher over a decade ago (Ilhner, 2009), demonstrating that while advancements are made, many emerging themes of corporate discourse and climate crisis remain similar. This project also contributes to current conversations emerging inside and outside the field in which other scholars, journalists, and writers are attempting to imagine a world in which we can be better. We can advocate for change, asking policy makers, energy companies, and technology companies to do more to ensure we address the climate crisis. To do so, we need to understand how Google’s discursive construction of sustainability potentially limits the ability to imagine other means of sustainable action at the corporate level. We must move past such discourse and recognize the complex tensions, dimensions, and relationships of this media infrastructure. The Internet is 24/7, and as Google promotes, the company appears to discursively argue corporate benevolence and retroactive sustainability are saving answers while still contributing to creating a world in which humans cannot exist humanely in the present and in the future.