Google is going greener.
Today, the internet giant announced that it's buying power from California's Altamont Pass, an iconic 7-square-mile wind farm between the San Francisco Bay Area and the state's Central Valley. The company has signed a 20-year power purchase agreement with Florida-based NextEra Energy, which owns the wind farm, according to a report from the San Jose Mercury News.
By 2016, Google says, 50 percent of the power produced by the wind farm, or 43 MW of electricity, will power 100 percent of its Googleplex campus in Mountain View, California, about 50 miles away from the wind farm.
The terms of Google's deal with NextEra were not publicly disclosed, but part of the agreement between the two companies includes a transformation of the wind farm. Three-hundred and seventy of the wind farm's old turbines from the 1980s will be replaced by 24 bigger machines that will produce twice as much energy, Google says. Fewer and more efficient turbines will also reduce the number of bird deaths from the spinning blades, according to the tech company.
"We think this project is especially cool because back in the 1980s, the golden hills of Altamont Pass were an early test bed for the first large-scale wind power technology in the U.S.," David Radcliffe, Google's VP of real estate and workplaces services, said in a statement. "We’ve been blown away (pun intended :)) by how far turbine technology has come since then."
The deal is part of a larger effort from Google---and other tech giants---to move away from dirty energy. This is particularly important in the massive data centers that underpin the online services operated by the likes of Google, Apple, and Amazon. But as Google says, change is also needed with office buildings and other facilities.
Google committed to being carbon-neutral in 2007, and it says it uses clean energy for its data centers when possible---either buying power directly from green energy facilities in the same grid regions or opening data centers in sites like the Arctic Circle, where it can take advantage of natural climates. Now, apparently, the company wants to extend its commitment to include the power its headquarters runs on as well.
The company's announcement of its wind energy deal comes on the heels of Apple's revelation Tuesday that it spent $850 million to buy power and help build a 280-megawatt solar farm in Monterey County, which will power its Cupertino headquarters and all California Apple stores.
"We know at Apple that climate change is real," Apple CEO Tim Cook said yesterday at a technology conference hosted by Goldman Sachs. "Our view is that the time for talk is past, and the time for action is now."
