Google continues to embrace renewable energy

Renewable energy continues to attract Google’s support

Google has been an advocate for renewable energy for several years. The company has made major strides in embracing clean power and has even devoted significant sums of money to the development of renewable energy projects in the U.S. While Google is often considered a leader in the clean energy space, as far as businesses adoption is concerned, the company is often on the lookout for ways to reduce its use of fossil-fuels in order to become more environmentally friendly.

Google to purchase 100% of wind energy system’s production

Google has announced that it has entered into a new power purchase agreement with the Happy Hereford Wind Farm, located in Amarillo, Texas. The wind farm boasts of a capacity of 240 megawatts and Google has agreed to purchase the entirety of the wind farm’s capacity. This will bring the amount of electrical power that Google receives from wind energy systems to 540 megawatts, enough to power approximately 170,000 average homes.

System to begin producing electricity in late 2014

The Happy Hereford Wind Farm is still under development, managed by Chermac Energy, a Native American company based in Oklahoma. The wind energy system is expected to begin producing electrical power in late 2014 and would have provided this electricity to the Southwest Power Pool, a regional energy grid. Google is interested in consuming renewable energy directly from its source, rather than going through third party utilities to obtain this energy. As such, the electricity that the wind energy system produces will be purchased by Google rather than going into the regional energy grid.

Google shows support for various forms of renewable energy

Wind energy is not the only form of clean power that Google is interested in. Solar energy has also caught the company’s eye, but Google has been eager to pursue wind power in an aggressive fashion in recent years. The company is looking to leverage the power of renewable energy in order to reduce the carbon emissions it is responsible for.