Tech giant Google stated that it has entered into power purchase agreements to buy clean electricity from three new wind farms in Finland, totaling 190MW, for a period of ten years.
Image: Google to buy power from three Finnish wind farms. Photo: Courtesy of guido muermann/FreeImages.com.
These deals are the first in the country and they have been signed to power their expanding operations with renewable energy, Google said.
With these three, Google now has signed a total of 14 PPAs in Europe to power its operations from a total of 900MW of wind and solar capacity. Till date, Google claims to have invested nearly €1bn in Europe for obtaining renewable energy.
Google said: “Just like our data center investments, our renewable energy purchases also bring benefits in the form of jobs and economic activity to communities where the projects are developed and built.”
The search engine giant stated that acquiring renewable energy is part of its commitment to grow its operations sustainably. It follows long-term, fixed-price contracts to reduce its exposure to volatile fuel prices.
In April, Google announced that its total purchase of energy from sources like wind and solar surpassed the amount of electricity used by our operations around the world, including offices and data centers.
At that time, Google had contracts to purchase 3GW of output from renewable energy projects.
It said: “To date, our renewable energy contracts have led to over $3 billion in new capital investment around the world.”
In November last year, Google signed power purchase agreements with EDF Renewable Energy and Avangrid Renewables to buy a total of 396MW of clean energy.
As per the deals, EDF Renewable Energy agreed to supply 200MW of electricity from its Glaciers Edge Wind Project in Cherokee County, Iowa, to Google.
Avangrid Renewables agreed to supply 196MW of clean energy from its two wind farms including Coyote Ridge and Tatanka Ridge Wind Farms in Brookings and Deuel counties, each 98 MW, just northeast of Brookings, South Dakota.
The Glaciers Edge Wind Project was expected to come online in December 2019.
The two wind farms from Avangrid Renewables have the capacity of generating enough power to be supplied to more than 50,000 average households.