The new €600 million data center Google is building in Eemshaven in the Netherlands will be completely powered by renewable energy from its first day of operation. This new announcement from Google on its Green Blog touts the new long-term agreement the internet and advertising giant has signed.
Google has signed a 10-year power purchase agreement with Dutch power company Eneco to provide 100% renewable energy from the first day of the data center’s operation — which is expected to be in the first half of 2016. Specifically, Google is buying the complete output of a new Eneco wind farm currently under construction at Delfzijl, near Eemshaven.
The new data center was announced in September, and will be the company’s “fourth hyper efficient facility in Europe.” The power purchase agreement to power the new Eemshaven data center is the third such PPA the company has signed in Europe over the past 18 months — the other two being with two wind farm developers in Sweden and another in Finland.
“We promised that our new Eemshaven datacenter would run on renewable energy from day one of operation — and it will,” said Francois Sterin, Director Global Infrastructure. “Power purchase agreements help give wind farm developers like Eneco the economic certainty to invest in new renewable energy generation capacity, which is good for the environment – but also makes great financial sense for companies like Google.”
“Our agreement with Google is a further endorsement of the potential of wind power and our commitment to sustainable energy”, said Jeroen de Haas, CEO at Eneco. “We’re looking forward to working with Google over the next ten years to help them stay ahead of their commitment to carbon neutrality.”
Google has long made a habit of ensuring energy for its data centers and other operations are renewable energy driven. As Francois Sterin notes in the Google blog post, this is the eighth long-term PPA for Google around the globe. From investments into renewable energy projects to self-driving cars to pulling out of political groups that oppose climate change action, Google makes big on its environmental claims.
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