Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
By Siona Ahuja ’24
Staff Writer
Google announced on March 30 that starting later this year, the Google Maps app will direct drivers on routes estimated to generate the lowest carbon emissions. Google said it would factor in emissions data based on different types of slopes and inclines using its own Street View feature combined with aerial and satellite imagery.
“What we are seeing is for around half of routes, we are able to find an option more eco-friendly with minimal or no time-cost tradeoff,” Russell Dicker, a director of product at Google, said in an article for Reuters.
Unless the user opts out of this feature, they will automatically be offered the most eco-friendly route. In cases when alternative high-emission routes are substantially faster, Google Maps will provide all available options and let the user compare estimated emissions. “It will also push those on the fence to make a deliberate choice of speed over sustainability and often cost,” Siddharth Pathak, a partner at the consultancy firm Kearney, said in an article for the BBC.
In a blog post, Google also said that beginning in June, it will start cautioning drivers from traveling through low-emission zones — areas that restrict polluting vehicles like diesel cars or cars with specific emissions stickers — in order to help purify the air. Such spaces are common in countries like the Netherlands, Spain, Germany, France and the United Kingdom.
This policy comes months after Google made its biggest green pledge in September 2020.
In the midst of the 2020 wildfires that swept through California, home to Google’s headquarters, CEO of Alphabet Inc. and Google, its subsidiary, Sundar Pichai announced via video that the company aims to run its operations carbon-free by 2030. The company also announced that it purchased enough carbon offsets to cancel out all the planet-warming carbon emissions it released since its founding in 1998.