Not many think of internet companies like Google or Amazon as dirty, but much of the energy fueling these companies come from fossil fuels, according to How Dirty is Your Data: A Look at the Energy Choices that Power Cloud Computing. That's why Google is investing in a power purchase agreement (PPA) with NextEra wind energy. Under this PPA, Google has signed a 20 year energy contract to lock in electric prices. Last Year, Google purchased a PPA for 114 megawatts in Iowa, and this year they have purchased a PPA 100.8 MW in Oklahoma. These PPA's are in the same area where Google holds data centers.
This is definitely a practice of large companies like Google that I can get behind. If large corporations continue to invest in renewables, whether its for PR purposes or genuine it doesn't matter, then this will definitely help push better renewable technologies for the future. Currently, data centers consume 1.5-2 percent of the world's electricity and is growing by 12% a year. Moving away from fossil fuels to wind power will greatly effect the world's energy distribution in the near future. Microsoft has already started to do the same thing, and I would like to see more companies to do this as well.
Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/26/idUS264144745920110426
A colleague of mine, Daniel Sarewitz, makes the same argument about the Department of Defense, which is a major purchaser of renewables. If you can get use industries to adopt these technologies, then you start to get economies of scale, it pushes innovation, and it brings down prices for everyone. Interesting.
ReplyDelete