Internet giant Google has announced that all of its offices and data centres - in which some 60,000 staff work - will be powered solely by clean and green energy from 2017. The company said that the move was a landmark moment. Google is already the biggest corporate purchaser of green energy. In 2015 it bought over 40pc of its power needs from solar and wind developments. 

Executives at the company have said that they will 'not rule out' future investments in nuclear energy either.

Google's spokesman for energy, Marc Oman, said that the move would genuinely be good for business and help Google to secure fixed prices for long-term certainty, with renewable power being increasingly competitive and the cheapest option.

He added that the business was convinced of the dangers of climate change and fossil fuels and was keen to contribute to measures to mitigate the risks.

Tech firms have come under mounting criticism for the carbon outputs of their vast operations, which already represent around 2pc of the world's C02 emissions - on a par with aviation.

Google has been working towards its 100pc renewables target for the past five years. It has struggled in some cases to negotiate favourable power-purchase agreements and deal with the legalities of engaging with multiple state-wide suppliers.

The biggest energy demand for the company comes from its data centres, and although Google is investing in AI to improve efficiency, their overall power requirements are still growing. In 2015, the company purchased a whopping 5.7 TWh of green energy, primarily from US wind farms.

Although the cost of wind and solar energy is dropping, Google wants to sign up to ten-year power-purchase agreements for biomass, hydro and nuclear energy.