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Dutch windmills to power Google’s Eemshaven data center
11/18/14
(Cross-posted from the
Google Europe Blog
)
The Netherlands is famous for its
windmills
, which over the years have been used to saw wood, mill corn, pump water and much more. Now, a new generation of Dutch windmill - wind turbines - will power a very 21st century facility: our
new EUR 600m data center
, currently under construction in the north of the Netherlands.
Thanks to a new long-term agreement signed this week with Dutch power company Eneco, our Eemshaven data center will be 100% powered by renewable energy from its first day of operation, scheduled for the first half of 2016. We’ve agreed to buy the entire output of a new Eneco windfarm -- currently under construction at Delfzijl, near Eemshaven -- for the next ten years.
By entering into long-term agreements like this one with wind farm developers, we’ve been able to increase the amount of renewable energy we consume while helping enable the construction of new renewable energy facilities.
This is the third such power purchase agreement (PPA) we’ve signed in Europe in the last 18 months - the other two were with wind farm developers in Sweden and will power our Hamina, Finland data center with renewable energy.
Eneco’s new wind farm is an onshore-offshore development, which will use 19 turbines to generate 62 MW of renewable energy. Eneco expects the construction of the wind farm to provide employment for 80 people over the next 18 months.
This marks our eighth long-term agreement to purchase renewable energy around the globe. We sign these contracts for a few reasons: they make great financial sense for us by guaranteeing a long term source of clean energy for our data center and they also increase the amount of renewable energy available in the grid, which is great for the environment.
Posted by Francois Sterin, Director, Global Infrastructure Team
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