Google continues to emit greenhouse gases despite claiming to be carbon neutral, Dezeen has learned.
The tech giant, which says it has been carbon neutral since 2007 and claims to have eliminated its entire carbon legacy, has emitted around 20 million tonnes of carbon in that period.
Yet it has adopted a definition of carbon neutrality that allows it to claim its carbon footprint is zero while remaining an ongoing contributor to atmospheric carbon.
"Carbon neutrality still allows you to emit"
"Our legacy on carbon dates back to 2007 when we were the first major company to achieve carbon neutrality, and that was just nine years after we were founded," said Robin Bass, real estate and workplace services sustainability programs lead at Google. "We are carbon neutral in terms of purchasing renewable energy to offset all of our consumption and eliminating our legacy carbon, which is also part of our strategy."
Top: "Dragonscale" solar panels on Google's Mountain View building. Above: Photovoltaics and geothermal piles will provide some of the power for Google's new HQ
However, Bass admitted that the approach meant that the company continues to emit CO2 and that its offsetting programme does not compensate for its emissions by removing carbon from the atmosphere.
"Carbon neutrality still allows for carbon emissions," she told Dezeen. "People are using a lot of different terms and some of them mean different things.
"Th...