Dutch windmills to power Google’s Eemshaven data centre
Tuesday, November 18, 2014
The Netherlands is famous for its windmills, which over the years have been used to saw wood, mill corn, pump water and much more. Now, a new generation of Dutch windmill - wind turbines - will power a very 21st century facility: our new EUR 600m data centre, currently under construction in the north of the Netherlands.
Thanks to a new long-term agreement signed this week with Dutch power company Eneco, our Eemshaven datacenter will be 100% powered by renewable energy from its first day of operation, scheduled for the first half of 2016. We’ve agreed to buy the entire output of a new Eneco windfarm -- currently under construction at Delfzijl, near Eemshaven -- for the next ten years.
By entering into long-term agreements like this one with wind farm developers, we’ve been able to increase the amount of renewable energy we consume while helping enable the construction of new renewable energy facilities.
This is the third such power purchase agreement (PPA) we’ve signed in Europe in the last 18 months - the other two were with wind farm developers in Sweden and will power our Hamina, Finland datacenter with renewable energy.
Eneco’s new windfarm is an onshore-offshore development, which will use 19 turbines to generate 62 MW of renewable energy. Eneco expects the construction of the windfarm to provide employment for 80 people over the next 18 months.
This marks our eighth long-term agreement to purchase renewable energy around the globe. We sign these contracts for a few reasons: they make great financial sense for us by guaranteeing a long term source of clean energy for our data center and they also increase the amount of renewable energy available in the grid, which is great for the environment.
Thanks to a new long-term agreement signed this week with Dutch power company Eneco, our Eemshaven datacenter will be 100% powered by renewable energy from its first day of operation, scheduled for the first half of 2016. We’ve agreed to buy the entire output of a new Eneco windfarm -- currently under construction at Delfzijl, near Eemshaven -- for the next ten years.
By entering into long-term agreements like this one with wind farm developers, we’ve been able to increase the amount of renewable energy we consume while helping enable the construction of new renewable energy facilities.
This is the third such power purchase agreement (PPA) we’ve signed in Europe in the last 18 months - the other two were with wind farm developers in Sweden and will power our Hamina, Finland datacenter with renewable energy.
Eneco’s new windfarm is an onshore-offshore development, which will use 19 turbines to generate 62 MW of renewable energy. Eneco expects the construction of the windfarm to provide employment for 80 people over the next 18 months.
This marks our eighth long-term agreement to purchase renewable energy around the globe. We sign these contracts for a few reasons: they make great financial sense for us by guaranteeing a long term source of clean energy for our data center and they also increase the amount of renewable energy available in the grid, which is great for the environment.
And when the wind stops blowing the internet goes down, right? Of course not. Like other such schemes, natural gas will be used for backup — "backup" meaning about 75% of the time, more or less. And the gas will come from Siberia, through notoriously leaky pipelines that are losing about 15-25% of that methane into the atmosphere. If you lose more than about 2%, you might as well be burning coal as far as greenhouse gas effects are concerned, because methane is far more damaging in that respect than CO2. Using Russian gas is just contributing to an ongoing environmental fiasco.
ReplyDeleteIf Google really wanted to run on dependable clean energy, it would buy nuclear-generated electricity from Belgium or France or Sweden. Otherwise they're just greenwashing, a PR effort designed to make energy fantasists feel good.
Re: "natural gas backup about 75% of the time" - Where are the figures stating that the wind will be blowing only 25% of the time. This is a coastal wind farm and it is crazy to suggest that this is the case.
ReplyDeleteRe: "through notoriously leaky pipelines that are losing about 15-25% of that methane into the atmosphere" - Any company that extracts gas has put in a lot of effort to do so, why would they accept a loss of 15-25% revenue? Again, do you have any official figures to back this up - and not figures produced by some Green leaning think Tank.
great post, thank you
ReplyDelete