Authorization
Google will finally be able to say that its Mountain View headquarters is powered by 100 percent clean energy. On Wednesday, Google announced via a blog post (and reported in more detail by the San Jose Mercury) that it plans to buy half of the electricity that will be produced by a newly upgraded wind project at the Altamont Pass, near Livermore, Calif.
The Altamont Pass wind farm was originally developed in the 1980s and was one of the first and largest wind farms in the U.S. But over the decades, wind turbine technology has progressed considerably, and in recent years thousands of the smaller turbines at the Altamont Pass have started to be decommissioned.
Now NextEra Energy Resources, which is developing the new wind project, plans to install a few hundred newer and larger turbines to provide the same amount of wind power as the many smaller ones used to. Google plans to buy half of the total amount of wind power from the project via a 20-year power purchase agreement and an undisclosed company (one that isn’t a tech company or utility, the Mercury reported), will buy the other half of the power. The new turbines will start providing wind power to the grid in 2016.
This is just the latest move by Google to tap into clean power. Over the years the company has spent over a billion dollars on various clean energy projects, through project financing, power purchase agreements and even equity. Over a third of Google’s energy now comes from clean power.
Source: https://gigaom.com/2015/02/11/google-to-buy-wind-power-from-bay-areas-altamont-pass/
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