The long-term commitments announced cover up to 842 megawatts of power that will flow from six different wind and solar power projects scheduled to be finished within the next two years in the U.S., Chile and Sweden.
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“These long-term contracts range from 10-20 years and provide projects with the financial certainty and scale necessary to build these wind and solar facilities-thus bringing new renewable energy onto the grid in these regions”, Google said. He added that Cairo Solar paid EGP 9m to the Ministry of Electricity this week, 30% of which is the cost-sharing agreement the ministry received to establish the roads and transformer stations for solar energy projects in the Benban area in Aswan.
“We wanted to send the message that corporate America is really committed to driving the transition to a clean-energy economy”, Terrell said. “They also help us secure clean energy in the future-for ourselves and the world”. Its most recently announced data centre, in Alabama, will be 100% renewable powered from its inauguration.
Apple, Facebook and other technology companies also have been investing heavily in renewable energy in an effort to reduce the pollution caused by the popularity of their products.
Google is not the only company buying clean energy.
Google was among 13 major companies to sign the American Business Act on Climate Pledge, an Obama administration-backed drive to voice support for a strong outcome at COP21 talks. According to an independent study from the Rocky Mountain Institute, Google is now the largest corporate buyer of clean energy.
When the White House announced those commitments this summer, Google vowed to triple its clean energy purchases by 2025. Separately, the company is investing in major clean energy projects in an effort to bootstrap a larger shift across other industries.
Up until now, Google had purchased around 1.2 gigawatts of clean energy capacity around the world – a gigawatt is a billion watts. In other words, a lot of juice.
This new PPA builds on the relationship forged between the two companies when in December 2012, Google made an approximately $200 million equity investment in EDF RE’s Spinning Spur Wind Project, a 161-MW facility located in Oldham County, Texas demonstrating that corporations can serve as a new source of capital for the renewable energy sector. The Cairo Solar alliance, which includes the Engineering Consultants Group (ECG), and AMC, among 136 Egyptian and worldwide companies, qualified to implement the new and renewable energy projects, in accordance with the feed-in tariff system approved by the cabinet, out of 187 offers presented.
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Google is another step closer in their goal of powering 100 percent of their operations with clean energy.
