Green Blog
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Going solar with SunPower
4/23/14
(Cross-posted from the
Official Google Blog
)
Just because Earth Day is over doesn’t mean we’re done doing good things for the planet. Yesterday we announced
our biggest renewable energy purchase yet
: an agreement with our Iowa utility partner to supply our data center facilities there with up to 407 megawatts of wind energy.
Today, we’re taking another step towards a clean energy future with a major new investment. Together with
SunPower Corporation
we’re creating a new $250 million fund to help finance the purchase of residential rooftop solar systems—making it easier for thousands of households across the U.S. to go solar. Essentially, this is how it works: Using the fund ($100 million from Google and $150 million from SunPower), we buy the solar panel systems. Then we lease them to homeowners at a cost that’s typically lower than their normal electricity bill. So by participating in this program, you don’t just help the environment—you can also save money.
A home sporting SunPower solar panels
SunPower delivers solar to residential, utility and commercial customers and also manufacturers its own solar cells and panels.They’re known for having high-quality, high reliability panels which can generate up to 50 percent more power per unit area, with guaranteed performance and lower degradation over time. That means that you can install fewer solar panels to get the same amount of energy. And SunPower both makes the panels and manages the installation, so the process is seamless.
This is our
16th renewable energy investment
and our third residential rooftop solar investment (the others being with
Solar City
and
Clean Power Finance
). Overall we’ve invested more than $1 billion in 16 renewable energy projects around the world, and we’re always on the hunt for new opportunities to make more renewable energy available to more people—Earth Day and every day.
Posted by Rob Parker, Renewable energy team
An Earth Day treat: lots of renewable energy for our Iowa data center
4/22/14
We’ve been talking to MidAmerican Energy, our energy supplier in Iowa, about renewable energy since we started building our
Iowa data center
in 2007. Just in time for Earth Day, we now have a freshly inked agreement with MidAmerican Energy to supply our Iowa data center facilities with up to 407 MW of 100% renewable wind energy, as tracked by renewable energy certificates. This agreement will not only cover our current facilities but will allow for future expansion supplied by renewable energy as well.
This is our
seventh and largest renewable energy commitment
to date, bringing the total amount of renewable energy we’ve contracted for to over one gigawatt (1,000 megawatts).
We’ve entered into a few different kinds of agreements over the years - sometimes signing power purchase agreements (PPAs) with wind farm developers and sometimes working with our local utility partners. This agreement is similar to our
2012 agreement
with our Oklahoma utility, the Grand River Dam Authority. In this case, MidAmerican Energy will sell energy to our Iowa data center bundled with and tracked by renewable energy certificates generated by projects that are part of its
Wind VIII program
.
PPAs and agreements like this one are a big part of the
commitment to carbon neutrality
we made back in 2007, and we’re working to make this whole process easier for other companies by advocating for
renewable energy tariffs
. Depending on the circumstances, any of these approaches can make sense, and we’re always on the hunt for new and creative ways to
power our operations
with renewable energy. But it’s not just our own operations we want to green: Google has also invested over $1B in 15
renewable energy investments
around the world in an effort to put more renewable energy on the grid and reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.
We’ll continue working with MidAmerican Energy and all of our utility partners to find diverse ways to deliver clean, renewable energy to our data centers. Happy Earth Day!
Posted by Neha Palmer and Sam Arons, Wind Ninjas
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