- The new deals worth $2 billion in new investments were made by the Internet giant in in the U.S., Chile and Europe.
Global technology giant Google has finalized new 18 energy deals for the purchase of power from an aggregate renewable energy capacity of 1.6 GW across Europe and the Americas.
The company said this is its largest energy purchase and that it will increase the renewable energy portfolio from which it buys power to 5.5 GW. “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 company said in its blog.
In the U.S., the deals are spread across North Carolina (155 MW), South Carolina (75 MW), and Texas (490 MW), while in Europe these are located in Finland (255 MW), Sweden (286 MW), Belgium (92 MW), and Denmark (160 MW). As for South America, the only deal closed by google is in Chile, where it agreed to buy power from a 135 MW hybrid wind and solar plant. “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 percent in the past decade) has made harnessing the sun increasingly cost-effective,” the Internet giant specified.
As of April 2018, Google had contracts to purchase 3 GW of output from renewable energy projects worldwide. These led to over $3 billion in new capital investment around the world, the company said at the time.
In January, the company signed its first solar PPA in Asia. Most recently, it also announced a plan to construct more than 400 MW of solar power capacity in the U.S. states of Alabama and Tennessee.
Author: Emiliano Bellini
This article was originally published in pv magazine and is republished with permission.
