Google Makes Largest Purchase Of Renewable Energy By A Private Entity Ever With 1.6 Gigawatt
Google has been constantly striving to be eco-friendly and not put stress on the world’s resources for its operations.
Two years ago Google was one of the first tech companies to run entirely on renewable energy, which they continued to do in 2018, making it the largest corporate buyer of renewable energy in the world.
And now, it has taken this to a whole new level by signing in 18 new energy deals around the world that will help build infrastructure worth more than $2 billion.
These deals raise Google’s worldwide portfolio of wind and solar agreements by more than 40 per cent, generating up to 5,500 MW. To put this into perspective, this capacity is similar to a million solar rooftops. This brings Google’s total supply to 1,600 megawatts of electricity.
Google has been constantly striving to be eco-friendly and not put stress on the world’s resources for its operations.
Two years ago Google was one of the first tech companies to run entirely on renewable energy, which they continued to do in 2018, making it the largest corporate buyer of renewable energy in the world.
And now, it has taken this to a whole new level by signing in 18 new energy deals around the world that will help build infrastructure worth more than $2 billion.
These deals raise Google’s worldwide portfolio of wind and solar agreements by more than 40 per cent, generating up to 5,500 MW. To put this into perspective, this capacity is similar to a million solar rooftops. This brings Google’s total supply to 1,600 megawatts of electricity.
According to a statement by Sundar Pichai in a blog post, “Once all these projects come online, our carbon-free energy portfolio will produce more electricity than places like Washington D.C. or entire countries like Lithuania or Uruguay use each year.”
The new deals are spread across the globe including considerable investments in the U.S., Chile and Europe. In the U.S., Google is acquiring energy from 720 MW of solar farms in North Carolina (155 MW), South Carolina (75 MW), and Texas (490 MW). This is more than twice the capacity of its existing global solar portfolio.
In South America, Google’s bringing in 125 MW of renewable energy capacity to the grid that powers its data centre in Chile. Google is making most of both solar and wind energy in a hybrid setup to generate as much electricity as it possibly can for its data centre.
According to Sundar Pichai, “These renewable energy purchases aren’t only notable for their size. Up to now, most of our renewable energy purchases in the U.S. have been wind-driven, but the declining cost of solar (down more than 80 per cent in the past decade) has made harnessing the sun increasingly cost-effective.”
Source: indiatimes
