Internet giant Google has entered a deal to fully power its new data center in the Netherlands with locally generated wind energy.
The company has signed a power purchase agreement (PPA) with Dutch renewable energy company Eneco for the entire output of the developer's 62 MW wind farm currently being built in Delfzijl, Netherlands.
Eneco says construction of the 19-turbine wind project will provide 80 jobs for local contractors over the building period of 18 months.
Starting in early 2016, Google will buy the wind energy for 10 years. The company is constructing a new EUR 600 million data center in Eemshaven, and the center is slated to open in the first half of 2016.
"We promised that our new Eemshaven data center would run on renewable energy from day one of operation – and it will," says Francois Sterin, Google's director global infrastructure.
"Power purchase agreements help give wind farm developers like Eneco the economic certainty to invest in new renewable energy generation capacity, which is good for the environment – but also makes great financial sense for companies like Google."
The agreement with Eneco is Google's third PPA in Europe over the last 18 months and represents the eighth such agreement globally to procure renewable energy for its data centers. In April, for example, the Internet company entered a deal for MidAmerican Energy to supply an Iowa data center with up to 407 MW of wind energy.
