Google to boost renewable energy for data centers

Google announced plans Thursday to boost its use of renewable energy for its data centers, moving closer to its goal of 100 percent clean energy use.

The US tech giant said it signed agreements to boost its use of wind and solar energy by contracting to buy 842 megawatts of electricity.

The deals include purchases of solar energy from the United States and Chile, and wind power from Swedish and US generating facilities.

“Across three countries, we’re nearly doubling the amount of renewable energy we’ve purchased to date,” Google’s Urs Hoelzle said in a blog post.

“We’re one step closer to our commitment to triple our purchases of renewable energy by 2025 and our goal of powering 100 percent of our operations with clean energy.”

Google has signed long-term contracts ranging from 10 to 20 years to “provide projects with the financial certainty and scale necessary to build these wind and solar facilities — thus bringing new renewable energy onto the grid in these regions,” Hoelzle said.