Google Seizing New Energy Opportunity

Google Says It Will Run Entirely on Renewable Energy in 2017

Quentin Hardy, December 6, 2017 (NY Times)

“Last year, Google consumed as much energy as the city of San Francisco. Next year, it said, all of that energy will come from wind farms and solar panels…Like almost any company, Google gets power from a power company, which operates an energy grid typically supplied by a number of sources, including hydroelectric dams, natural gas, coal and wind power…[Over the last decade, with relatively little fanfare, Google has participated in a number of large-scale deals with renewable producers, typically guaranteeing to buy the energy they produce with their wind turbines and solar cells. With those guarantees, wind companies can obtain bank financing to build more turbines…The power created by the renewables is plugged into the utility grid, so that Google’s usage presents no net consumption of fossil fuels and the pool of electricity gets a relatively larger share of renewable sources…[Whether Google is the largest buyer of renewables would be difficult to verify, but there is no doubt its] large computer complexes, along with similar global operations by Amazon and Microsoft, are among the world’s fastest-growing new consumers of electricity…” click here for more

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