Dive Summary:
- On Tuesday, Google announced it is buying 240 megawatts (MW) of wind power from the Happy Hereford farm in Amarillo, Texas to power its data centers. The buy is Google's largest power purchase agreement so far.
- Regulations prevent Google from consuming the energy itself. Instead, Google will sell the energy on the wholesale market, retire the renewable energy credits it gets and use the rest of the credits to reduce its carbon footprint, according to a Google press release.
- To date, Google has invested more than $1 billion to procure 2 gigawatts of clean power projects.
Insight: Google is using the deal to further its goal of powering its data centers entirely with renewable energy. It may sound ridiculous, but Google is paying for wind energy to be put onto the grid that they cannot directly use. Despite the ludicrousness of it, the move is another signal that big companies are increasingly foregoing utilities for their bulk power needs. As generation resources become more decentralized, commercial, industrial and even residential customers are starting to view transmission and distribution companies as an unnecessary middleman for their electricity needs. In the not-too-distant future, it's altogether possible end-users may rely on a combination of distributed generation, microgrids and energy storage while utilities could be relegated to a back-up power option. — Davide Savenije
From the article:
"These investments have been in the form of equity into projects, directly and indirectly buying clean power, investing in clean power startups, and even more experimental initiatives like buying wind startup Makani Power."
