Google buys wind power from Sweden in bid to go 100% renewable

Climate Progress

Google has agreed to buy energy from four Swedish wind farms, a purchase that’s part of the search giant’s goal to be powered entirely by renewable energy.

Last week, Google announced that it had signed a 10-year deal with Swedish wind company Eolus Vind, which will supply Google with 59 megawatts of power from four wind farms. The project will become fully operational in 2015.

“We’re always looking for ways to increase the amount of renewable energy we use,” said Francois Sterin, director of global infrastructure at Google. “Long-term power purchase agreements enable wind farm developers to add new generation capacity to the grid, which is good for the environment, but they also make great financial sense for companies like Google.”

Google has been ramping up its renewable energy usage in recent years, as part of its goal to power its data centers with 100 percent renewable energy (a goal that doesn’t have a timeline). In June, Google agreed to buy 10 years worth of energy from Swedish wind farm developer and operator O2. The energy produced by O2 will be used to power Google’s data center in Finland. In November, Google announced that it was investing about $80 million in six utility-scale solar facilities in California and Arizona, projects that have a combined capacity of 106 megawatts and will generate enough electricity to power more than 17,000 homes. And in December, Google invested $75 million in a Texas wind farm, which will have a production capacity of 182 megawatts.

So far, Google has sunk more than $1 billion into wind and solar projects that in total generate more than 2 gigawatts — enough, according to Google, to power 500,000 American homes for one year. As of August, 33 percent of Google’s energy came from renewable sources.

This article was originally published on Climate Progress. Reproduced with permission