Every year people search on Google trillions of times; every minute people upload more than 400 hours of YouTube videos. All of that takes an incredible amount of processing power — which means energy.

For that reason, the company has spent years perfecting the efficiency of their data centres, making them 50% more energy efficient that the industry average. But they didn’t stop there. Over the years, the company has been purchasing renewable energy sources to reduce their carbon footprint.

In fact, they estimate that in 2017, Google will reach 100% renewable energy for their global operations — including both data centers and offices.

Today, Google is the world’s largest corporate buyer of renewable power, with commitments reaching 2.6 gigawatts (2,600 megawatts) of wind and solar energy.

To reach this goal they’ll be directly buying enough wind and solar electricity annually to account for every unit of electricity their operations consume, globally.

In addition, today Google celebrates the opening of their newest datacenter in Eemshaven, the Netherlands, which is the first Google datacenter to be powered by 100% renewable energy from day one.

The latest addition to the fleet of energy-efficient cloud computing facilities is powered by 100% renewable energy through a wind farm in nearby Delfzijl. A second wind project was announced recently in Zeeland through a new community-owned cooperative of 4,000 people called Windpark Krammer.