Episode 167: A Carbon-Free Internet with Director of Energy at Google, Michael Terrell
Episode 167: A Carbon-Free Internet with Director of Energy at Google, Michael Terrell
Today, Jason catches up with Google’s Director of Energy, Michael Terrell. Michael explains his role as the Director of Energy, key learnings he's had over the past 14 years at Google, and how to accelerate a carbon-free future.
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What motivated you to focus on climate?
Originally, I was more interested in the natural resource side of things. In college, I went out and did cave research for the park service in Oregon and was really fascinated by the intersection of the environment and federal policy. And that actually led me to Washington, DC. I got a job working at the White House right after I got out of college in the environmental office there. We spent quite a bit of time with Al Gore in those days. This was in the Clinton administration.
And I saw him give his climate talk and it really moved me and really got me interesting in this space in general. It really got me interested in this intersection of energy and climate. At that point, I sort of shifted my interests more towards the energy side, which made sense since I came out of a family that was in the coal business, and really sort of went from there.
What have been some of the biggest learnings, and/or surprises along the way in this 14-year journey that you've had so far?
We had that sort of the first wave of cleantech and when I came out to Silicon Valley from Washington, D.C. that was just picking up. I think at the time we all underestimated the difficulty of moving the needle in this space. Climate change is one of the greatest challenges the world has ever faced, and energy and climate solutions take massive investments to develop and scale, and we're trying to displace very mature and entrenched industries. So, you know, I think there were a lot of lessons learned from those early days out here in Silicon Valley.
We've learned a lot. I'm still very optimistic. We've now shown that we can scale critical technologies that we need to solve climate, you know, wind, solar, storage. There's a wider scope of technologies that are available that we can put to use, smart devices, software, machine learning. And the other thing that I think we've learned and that's much more interesting about the space now is there are many stronger players. I mean, it used to just be a small set of incumbents and that was it. But there are so many companies getting in the game on energy now.
At Google, we're a huge power consumer which gives us an ability to hopefully drive the market in a good direction towards cleaner energy. So is Amazon, so is Microsoft, Tesla's now a major auto producer. And there are companies that have been built up around the software space. I think we've come a long way and also learned that you really need to be smart and understand the space to move the needle. But I do think it's a very exciting time now, and you really are starting to see the change that we were set out to do, you know, 10, 15 years ago.
Is it possible to balance the best interest of the company and shareholders in the short term, that also push on the right path towards net-zero and 24/7 carbon-free energy?
I think it's possible for us to do it. There's such a strong interest from our customers, from our employees, from the leadership, and from our shareholders to see us out and having a leadership role in this area.
Again, it might differ depending on the company. I recognize that as a tech company that's still in a very, sort of, the high growth phase of our history, it might be easier to make those decisions than it is for other companies where the pressure on the bottom line may be even greater. But again, I think there's a strong interest.
And also, I think there's a lot of value in doing this work. I mean, we've gotten so much smarter about how we manage energy for this company by thinking about it more holistically. We've found ways to empower ourselves as a company because we got frustrated with our energy providers because they weren't providing us the product that we were asking for. So we went out and changed the laws so we could go and procure it ourselves. And we're working to that in a lot of places around the world, and that's delivering value to the company. I think there are, again, ways that you can orient yourself towards doing right by the climate and it delivers a lot of value in numerous ways that are not always quantified.
Take, for example, our move to 24/7 carbon-free energy. We're now monitoring the carbon-free energy mix on every grid where we operate around the world in real-time and doing renewable energy deals to align with the gaps we need to fill with that. Well, is that something that we can make available to our cloud customers for them to use as well? We've already started surfacing that data with them, allowing them to choose which region they want to run their computer based on, which regions may be cleaner. And so, that's something that I wouldn't have even thought of even a year or two ago as we were thinking about this program.
I think if you orient yourself in the right way, and you make smart decisions, you can drive a lot of value.
In the interim, in some of these harder to decarbonize areas, whether it's aviation, or whether it's cement or concrete, or industrial processes, how big a role do you think that things like offsets and the carbon markets should, and will play?
I really struggle with net-zero commitments, and I'm speaking as someone who used to trade offsets in that business before I came to Google, and who has been at a company that set a carbon neutrality target back in 2007. We were one of the first companies to do that.
And I think that might have been the right answer in 2007. I'm not so sure that's the right answer for 2021. The urgency around solving this problem is so much greater, and the suite of options available is so much greater now. I think we need to really be focused on solving the problems; changing the way we're living and we're working.
And that's certainly what we're trying to do with 24/7 carbon-free energy at Google. We're moving beyond offsets, we're not talking about net zero, we're talking about zero. And we feel that we've evolved as a company, with respect to our electricity use, and that the electricity space has evolved to a point where we can actually have that conversation. We think it's possible and it's achievable, and it's something we can pull off in a reasonable amount of time.
I do worry sometimes that there's such a focus on setting some sort of a net-zero target that we lose sight of what we're trying to do, which is actually to drive system change. Certainly net zero may make sense if you're an oil company but for others would it be better for companies to focus on how to drive emission reductions that are many, many thousands of times their own carbon footprint. Focus on the areas where the companies intersect the economy, or where they intersect people's lives. Ultimately we need to change the way the world lives and works.
Are there key policy initiatives that, if they were in place, would make a big difference for your efforts with Google? Are there specific policy initiatives that you're putting resources towards championing currently?
Absolutely. There are a number of policies that could make a difference. First of all, obviously, pricing carbon is on everybody's list and something that would be very beneficial from a climate perspective, but it's been hard to achieve. There are so many other policies that also can drive real change and, that are a little bit more focused on the energy side, for example.
So, clean electricity standards. The state renewable portfolio standards across the US are what really drove the initial scaling of renewable energy in this company. It really helped to open the door for companies to buy too. So, we should have really strong clean electricity standards.
We think it's possible to get the grid to carbon-free much sooner; 10, 15 years versus 20, to 30, to 40 years. We should be structuring the electricity markets so that they allow more competitive procurement and allow more management of renewables over large areas. We should be putting in place programs that do R&D on new technology but also provide incentives for those technologies to be taken up and scaled.
So there's a lot that needs to happen on the policy side and a lot that can happen. And a lot of these things actually have pretty broad support, so we're optimistic that we can get some of these things passed and we're certainly out there being a champion for that.
Do you think it's possible to address the problem of climate change without sacrificing the time frames that have been set by the scientific community?
We have to be careful about leaving communities or people behind. There's no question that solving climate involves a transformation of the way we all use energy and live and work, and it needs to happen quickly. We need to be careful not to leave people behind. I think we have to be cognizant of that as we're building out programs and working on solutions and making sure we're addressing that. And you may have to have special circumstances that are put in place over a temporary basis to do that, to sort of cover some of those gaps. But certainly, long term, it's in my mind no question better for the planet, and better for the population.
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