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Bay View campus roofs contain 50,000 solar panels.

Bay View campus roofs contain 50,000 solar panels.

Photographer: Kelsey McClellan for Bloomberg Green
Green
The Big Take

Google’s Biggest Moonshot Is Its Search for a Carbon-Free Future

Sundar Pichai wants to head the first giant company run without emissions around the clock. It will take far more than money to achieve

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Google Bay View, the company’s newest campus, consists of three squat buildings nestled near the San Francisco Bay shoreline a few miles east of its headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. The first things visitors notice are the roofs.

They curve down gently from pinched peaks, like circus tents, sloping almost to the ground. Each roof is blanketed with overlapping solar panels that glisten with a brushed metal sheen on the edges. Google calls this design Dragonscale, and indeed it looks as if a mystical beast is curled up by the water in Silicon Valley.