Google announced the purchase of offshore wind energy for its data centers in Europe and signed a power purchase agreement to support two new wind farms off the coast of the Netherlands. This is Google's largest green power transaction to date.It's part of Google's plan to match the electricity use of all its data centers with 24/7 clean energy generation by 2030. To do this, the company needs to help move more renewable energy, including offshore wind, through the grid where it operates.
Today, the company shared the "next steps" for this plan in Europe, saying it will add more than 700 megawatts of clean energy capacity to the European grid.
Much of the new generation will come from two new offshore wind farms in the Netherlands, where two of Google's 24 data centers are located. The power purchase agreement was signed with the CrossWind and Ecowende consortium, a joint venture between Shell and Eneco energy companies.
The two companies are developing the Hollandse Kust Noord (HKN) wind farm site 5 and the Hollandse Kust West (HKW) site 6. HKN started generating electricity last year, while HKWVI is scheduled to start operating in 2026.
Together with Google's previous power purchase agreement, the company said its Dutch data centers will be 90% clean energy this year. Google has also announced smaller deals to buy renewable energy from onshore wind and solar farms in Italy, Poland and Belgium.
Google's plan is to meet its electricity needs by purchasing carbon-free energy. The data center itself does not run entirely on renewable energy, which accounts for about 40% of the Netherlands' electricity generation.
When tech companies say they use renewable energy, they usually mean they are paying for renewable energy certificates (RECs). Renewable energy generators sell renewable energy certificates for every megawatt hour of electricity produced by a wind farm. This revenue stream is supposed to support the development of new clean energy projects.
However, the popularity of renewable energy certificates poses a problem. The collapse in the price of renewable energy certificates means they often fail to bring in enough money to incentivize the development of new renewable energy projects - which is meaningless without increasing grid capacity.
Google and other tech companies, including Microsoft, are trying to overcome this problem by pledging to purchase carbon-free energy locally every hour. Rather than purchasing renewable energy on an annual basis, they pay for renewable energy generated nearby while the system is running. This will push local power grids to increase their ability to produce and store clean energy around the clock.
The offshore wind industry is particularly in need of such support as rising costs force developers to shutter projects in Europe and the United States, where Google has the largest number of data centers.