Google, the world's largest corporate buyer of clean energy, has struck a new deal to buy 236MW of new wind capacity to power its European data centres.
The new capacity will come from two wind farms currently under construction in Norway and Sweden, Google said in a blog post announcing the decision last week. The Norwegian project is a 50-turbine site, set to be completed in late 2017, while the Swedish power will come from a 22-turbine site due for completion in early 2018.
In both cases, Google said it has signed long-term price contracts to secure price certainty and help the projects' developers secure construction financing.
"One of our key goals is to enable the addition of new renewable energy generation capacity to the grid, rather than drawing power from existing facilities," Marc Oman, EU energy lead at Google Global Infrastructure, wrote in the blog post. "And thanks to Europe's increasingly integrated energy market, we're able to buy wind energy in Norway and Sweden, and consume it elsewhere in Europe."
Google now has power purchase agreements in place for more than 500MW of clean energy capacity in Europe, and almost 2.5GW globally, as it moves towards its goal of powering its entire operations with renewable energy. (businessGreen)
|