Google goes Dutch in search of renewable energy

Source:businessgreen.com

In a new agreement with 4 multinational companies – AkzoNobel, Google, Philips and DSM will make a purchase for almost all the energy that is renewable available in Netherlands.

According to Google, the agreement will enable the firms to contribute its quota to the Dutch target that aims to get 14% of its energy from renewable energy by the year 2024.

The first step involved in the partnership that is long term it the purchase of all the power produced from Krammer wind farm located in the province of Zeeland that was set up by 4000 people through a cooperative and will be made open in the year 2019.

The shareholders will get 5% of the power produced which will be reserved for them.  The rest of the 95% will be shared among the firms that are part of the consortium amounting to 0.35 TWh yearly which can be equated with the consumptions from 100, 000 households.

Global infrastructure director at Google, Francois Sterin, in a blog post, said that the agreement is very important for the wind farm to be funded and to meet up with the renewable energy demands of the companies involved. Going further, Sterin added that the agreement will enable the new data center that Google is running in Eemshven making use of renewable energy from the very first day that it opens in the later part of 2016.

Source:powerengineeringint.com
Source:powerengineeringint.com

Google said that the partnership is the first to take place in Netherlands which has multinational companies coming together to partner with local citizens in order to come up with what can best be described as an effective consumer-to-business partnership in energy.

Sterin also said that the consortium creates room for companies to explore various market opportunities, make agreements with renewable PPAs – Power Purchase Agreement, and meet the demands that are associated with sustaining such projects in a way that is cost effective.

The company has been making efforts to make use of clean energy since the year 2010 for its data centers with an intention to power its centers 100% with such energy. At the moment, in the Nordics, it has 6 PPAs, in Europe, it has 7 and then 19 in other parts of the world.

On Friday, the company said it has gone into a 10-year agreement with a wind farm located in Lehtirova for a 148MW supply for its European data centers.