Google is a clean energy leader (if you haven’t heard). It’s made a number of big clean energy investments in the past year or two and I recently decided to compile a little list of 7 of its biggest over on CleanTechnica. Check them out below.
1. Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System (“largest solar energy project in the world”): $168 million invested. (Announcement: April 11, 2011)
2. Caithness Shepherds Flat Wind Farm (“largest wind farm in world”): $100 million invested. (Announcement: April 18, 2011)
3. Offshore Wind Superhighway: Investment total undisclosed, but surely tens of millions of dollars (37.5% of the equity of the initial development stage). (Announcement: October 11, 2010)
4. NextEra Energy Resources Wind Project: $38.8 million invested. (Announcement: May 3, 2010)
5. 20-Year Power Purchase Agreements with NextEra Energy Resources.
Google signed a 20-year contract to buy power from a 114-MW Iowa wind farm in July, 2010. It was also recently announced that Google would be buying another 100 MW or so from NextEra Energy (from a different wind farm, this one in Oklahoma). (Announcements: July 20, 2010 and April 21, 2011)
6. Advanced Geothermal Energy Systems: Over $10 million invested. (Multiple investments)
7. German Solar Power Plant: Invested $5 million. (Announcement: April 7, 2011)
Hopefully more companies will follow Google’s lead soon, especially in the IT sector — the Internet currently uses more electricity than all but a handful of nations. If we had more Googles (and fewer Facebooks or Apples), it looks like we’d have a much brighter future.
For more info on the projects above, check out my CleanTechnica post, which includes a little summary of each project: Google’s Clean Energy Projects (7 Big Ones).
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Image via vaXzine
