I applaud Google for taking these steps, but reading between the lines here's another way to look at this:
From the article: The solar array will be "... capable of generating 1.6 megawatts of electricity, or enough to power 1,000 California homes" however, "the company will rely on solar power to supply nearly a third of the electricity consumed by office workers at its roughly one-million-square-foot headquarters" (emphasis added).
The way I read that, the Google campus uses over 4.8 megawatts of electricity, or enough to power over 3,000 California homes, just for the offices, excluding the server farms and data centres.
Alternate energy sources are great and I'm all for them, but the only long term solution is to be smarter about energy use and use less of it. For example, I've recently replaced my home PC with one using a Pentium M motherboard and cut my PC power consumption in half. Similarly, turning off devices instead of putting them on standby, and taking other measures such as replacing lightbulbs with low-energy bulbs all helps reduce my personal energy consumption.
In a business context, how about turning off office lights at night or going for motion sensor solutions so you aren't lighting empty space? Encouraging employees to turn off workstations overnight, etc. I've no idea if Google does something along these lines already, this isn't an attack on them.
My 2 cents.
