In September 2020, Google CEO Sundar Pichai unveiled one of the company’s most ambitious goals to date.

The concept of “24/7 carbon-free energy” is a new one for many people. Simply put, it means running data centers on clean electricity, everywhere, in every hour of every day. 

Not long ago, this kind of target would have seemed fantastical — even impossible. 

So how did a global internet company with a constant need for electricity to run large-scale computers get to a point where it could reasonably slash all of its carbon emissions within a decade? 

In this crossover episode, we’re featuring an installment of Google’s new podcast about data centers, called Where the Internet Lives. We look at the evolution of data-center energy use in a world confronting the threat of climate change — and explore promising ideas that could fuel a carbon-free future.

Where the Internet Lives is a six-episode podcast series from Google about the unseen world of data centers. Subscribe to it anywhere you get podcasts, or find it on these top platforms: Apple, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, RSS Feed.