Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL) and Google are the largest renewable energy buyers in the world. On Friday the company announced that it added another another 535 megawatts (MW) to bring its global total to 3,186 MW. That’s nearly enough to supply the electric power to the city of San Francisco.
The signed power purchase agreements (PPA) announced Friday mean that Google has met a goal it set last December to source 100% of its 2017 global energy consumption from renewable sources. Because the four PPAs the company just signed include power from projects not yet completed, actual consumption is not yet at 100%.
The head of Google’s energy and infrastructure group, Sam Arons, posted the news to his LinkedIn account on Friday:
535 MW more wind brings Google over 3 GW worldwide — 2*98 MW with Avangrid in South Dakota, 200 MW with EDF in Iowa, and 138.6 MW with GRDA in Oklahoma — cementing Google as the largest corporate purchaser of renewables on the planet @ 100% renewable in 2017!
The two Avangrid projects in South Dakota are under development, the Iowa project is expected to become operational in 2019, and the Oklahoma project is set to go into service early in 2018.
Google has signed agreements to purchase nearly 2,400 MW of power in the United States with the remaining 786 MW are located in Europe and Asia. The second largest purchaser of renewable energy is Amazon with some 1,219 MW, all in the United States.
Microsoft recently signed a PPA for a 180 MW wind farm in the Netherlands which more than double U.S. corporate PPA volumes in the Europe, Middle East, and Africa region.
Corporations have agreed to buy more than 2,400 MW of U.S. renewable energy so far in 2017 and are likely to meet the 2016 total U.S. investment in 2,600 MW.
Behind Google and Amazon among the top 10 purchasers of renewable energy are Apple, the U.S. Department of Defense, Microsoft, Walmart, Facebook, DowDuPont, Equinix, and Ikea.
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