Introduction Empowering individuals Working together Operating sustainably Governance and engagement Appendix 2023 Environmental Repo爀琀 Emerging oppo爀琀unities As the world becomes increasingly aware of the need for sustainability, individuals, businesses, and communities are looking for new ways to reduce their environmental impact. A爀琀i昀椀cial intelligence (AI) and the power of information to help individuals and organizations reduce emissions are two emerging oppo爀琀unities that Google is focusing on to help build a more sustainable future. AI for sustainability Seven years into our journey as an AI-昀椀rst company, we’ve emissions since launch—equivalent to taking approximately  14 made AI foundational to every pa爀琀 of our business and 250,000 fuel-based cars o昀昀 the road for a year. Our planet, as seen via Google Ea爀琀h ©2020 Landsat / Copernicus all Google products. Our approach to AI must be both bold and responsible. To us, that means developing AI in a Additionally, for over a decade, our Nest Learning way that maximizes the positive bene昀椀ts to society while Thermostats have used machine learning (ML) to help addressing the challenges, guided by our AI Principles. people save energy and money at home. From 2011 to 2022, Nest thermostats have helped customers We believe that AI is a foundational and transformational technology that will provide compelling and helpful We can use AI to help accelerate solutions to tackle cumulatively save more than 113 billion kWh of bene昀椀ts to people and society through its capacity to assist, complement, empower, and inspire people in  15 climate change by providing be琀琀er information to energy —more than double Po爀琀ugal’s annual electricity almost every 昀椀eld of human endeavor. It has the potential to contribute to tackling some of society’s most  16 individuals, operational optimization for organizations, consumption and equivalent to avoiding an estimated pressing challenges and oppo爀琀unities—among these, climate and sustainability, where we’re researching  17 and improved prediction and forecasting. We must 36 million tCO e emissions. 2 and innovating to help unlock scienti昀椀c discoveries and to assist people in making informed choices and also continue to 昀椀nd ways to reduce the environmental communities impacted by climate change. footprint of AI models. Optimization: Bringing carbon-e昀케cient computing to customers and pa爀琀ners. We’ve made signi昀椀cant We believe that ge琀琀ing AI right—which to us involves innovating and delivering widely accessible bene昀椀ts to Information: Empowering people to live more investments in cleaner cloud computing by making our people and society, while mitigating its risks—must be a collective e昀昀o爀琀 involving us and others, including sustainably through AI. In 2022, searches for data centers some of the most e昀케cient in the world researchers, developers, users (individuals, businesses, and other organizations), governments, regulators, “solar energy,” “electric bicycles,” and and sourcing more carbon-free energy. We’re helping and citizens. It’s critical that we collectively earn public trust if AI is to deliver on its potential for people and  13 “electric cars” reached all-time highs. People are our customers make real-time decisions to reduce society. As a company, we embrace the oppo爀琀unity to work with others to get AI right. interested in how to live more sustainably, and our goal is to emissions, and mitigate climate risks with data and AI. make it easier for them to do so. Features like eco-friendly For example, Google Cloud customers can reduce their James Manyika routing in Google Maps leverage AI to help people get to cloud footprint with a feature called Active Assist, which SVP, Research, Technology, & Society their destinations as quickly as possible while minimizing uses machine learning to identify unused (and potentially Google fuel or ba琀琀ery consumption. Eco-friendly routing has wasteful) workloads that could reduce carbon emissions helped prevent 1.2 million metric tons of estimated carbon if removed. 9