Google Signs Wind Power Deal With An Iowa Firm

July 21st, 2010 - 7:27 pm ICT by GD  

By Gina Gomez
googlJuly 21, (THAINDIAN NEWS) The search giant Google has announced yesterday that Google Energy subsidiary has signed a 20 year power purchase agreement with NextEra Energy, a wind farm in Iowa, US. The renewable wind power energy from the wind farm will give Google power to maintain their several data centers. The senior Vice President of Google Urs Hoelzle confirmed the news of Google official blog where he has mentioned that the company will have access to 114 megawatts of wind power at a fixed price during the 20 year deal.

The senior Vice President said that the deal shows that buying green makes business sense. He also added that by contracting to purchase so much energy for so long, Google is giving the developer of the wind farm financial certainty to build additional clean energy projects. The search giant will begin buying electricity from Iowa wind farm from July 30. The vice president in his statement said that the inability of renewable energy developers to obtain financing had been a significant inhibitor to the expansion of renewable energy.

The problem lies in the fact that Google cannot use the clean green energy by wind farm as the power goes into local grid. Google energy will sell the power on the regional spot market and use the revenues from spot market sales to buy renewable energy certificates which would counterbalance its green house gas emission. The senior vice president in the official blog said that the Google officials have been excited about this deal because taking 114 megawatts of wind power off the market for so long means that producers have the incentive and means to build more renewable energy capacity for other customers.

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