Google buys power from Norway’s largest wind farm

Wind power plant.Photo: Frank May / NTB scanpix

Google will purchase all electricity production from a new wind farm to be built in Rogaland. The deal will supply the company’s European data centers with additional renewable energy.

Google has reached an agreement with BlackRock, Zephyr and Norwegian Wind Energy, said the American IT giant in a statement Thursday morning.

The wind farm Tellenes in Rogaland will have 50 turbines after the scheduled completion in 2017. The total capacity will be 160 megawatts, making it the largest in Norway. The project has already received all plan approvals and permits.

Twelve years’ duration

The agreement to buy wind power generation has a duration of twelve years.
It gives Google the opportunity to buy renewable energy with the guarantee that it originates from Norway and to consume the equivalent amount of power elsewhere in Europe. Previously the company had 16 contracts for purchase of renewable energy.

– Google has been carbon neutral since 2007, and we are committed to supply 100 percent of our operations with renewable energy sources. The current agreement, Google’s first wind power contract in Norway and the largest to date in Europe, is an important step towards this commitment, says Marc Oman, head of the European energy section of Google Global Infrastructure.

Bought by asset manager

The wind farm has been bought by an investment company controlled by asset manager BlackRock from Zephyr and Norwegian Wind Energy, according to a press release by Østfold Energi Thursday morning.

 

Source: NTB scanpix / Norway Today

1 Comment on "Google buys power from Norway’s largest wind farm"

  1. Sveinulf Vågene | 2. July 2016 at 02:39 |

    Google wishes to be carbon neutral, but the cost of destruction of pristine nature does not seem to matter to this financial giant.
    In Norway windfarms are built on mountains where roads to bring in the turbines have to be cut through cliffs, and valleys crossed with huge mass fillings. Mountain tops will be blasted down and flattened out to give room to the large assembly places for the turbines. These deep scars in our mountain nature can never be removed. They will remain forever to remind us of our misguided climate policies where we forgot that the purpose of our policies was to save the nature and not destroy it. In contrast – in most other countries in the world windfarms are built on soft ground like farmlands or desert where the imprint of the windfarms can be easily removed and covered up when windpower is finished.

    With its entry into Norway windpower Google makes an uninformed and destructive move which runs counter to its green ambitions.

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