Together, these deals will increase the company’s worldwide portfolio of wind and solar agreements by more than 40 percent, to 5,500 MW—equivalent to the capacity of a million solar rooftops.
“These latest energy purchases will spur the construction of more than $2 billion in new energy infrastructure, including millions of solar panels and hundreds of wind turbines spread across three continents. In all, our renewable energy fleet now stands at 52 projects, driving more than $7 billion in new construction and thousands of related jobs,” Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, said in a blog post.
According to Google, the company is not buying power from existing wind and solar farms but instead is making long-term purchase commitments that result in the development of new projects.
“Bringing incremental renewable energy to the grids where we consume energy is a critical component of pursuing 24x7 carbon-free energy for all of our operations,” Pichai said.
These 18 new deals span the globe, and include investments in the U.S., Chile and Europe. In the U.S., Google will purchase energy from 720 MW of solar farms in North Carolina (155 MW), South Carolina (75 MW), and Texas (490 MW)—more than doubling the capacity of its global solar portfolio to date. In South America, Google is adding 125 MW of renewable energy capacity to the grid that supplies its data center in Chile. Finally, almost half (793 MW) of the new renewable energy capacity purchased will be located in Europe, specifically Finland (255 MW), Sweden (286 MW), Belgium (92 MW), and Denmark (160 MW).
These agreements will bring additional large-scale solar and wind farms—representing more than $2 billion in new energy infrastructure—to electric grids worldwide, according to the company.
