Google’s Sunroof Project is expanding its span

When Google undertakes something, it never does things by half. Its Sunroof Project makes no exception, 60 million buildings being already covered, according to an update published by the company.

The Sunroof Project, initially developed by Carl Elkin, a Google employee, is a tool designed to calculate the solar energy potential of housing buildings. Based on the Google Earth high-definition images available, the software appreciates if the roof has the right exposure for solar panels and the savings these would represent for the landlords. The final aim is to foster the use of renewable energies in the United States.

The initiative, launched nearly two years ago, was first tested in San Francisco and soon became nationwide. It appears that it would be possible to fit solar panels on 79% of the screened buildings. A result that even reaches 90% in Hawaii, Arizona, Nevada and New Mexico. However, in Pennsylvania, Maine and Minnesota, it is down to 60%. Houston comes first in the ranking of the 10 cities with most solar potential, followed by Los Angeles and Phoenix.

The Californian organization is something of an expert in the field as its data centers consume almost exclusively renewable energies and it has adopted the “zero waste” philosophy as a second nature.