Google announces ‘biggest ever’ clean energy deals

Google has announced the biggest corporate purchase of renewable energy in history, however, the company has received criticism for still supporting climate-denying organisations. 

According to a report released by Google, these new deals will increase their worldwide portfolio of wind and solar agreements by more than 40%.

According to the report, once these projects are complete they will produce more electricity than the whole of Lithuania each year.

These deals will span across the globe, with projects in the U.S. Chile and in Europe.

In the U.S. they will invest in 720MW of solar farms in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Texas.

In South America, they are adding 125MW of renewable energy in Chile.  This investment will be in hybrid technology that combines solar and wind energy.

Almost half (793MW) of the new renewable energy will be purchased in Europe, specifically in Finland, Sweden, Belgium, and Denmark.

They have also announced two new grants to support any organisation who wants to expand their access to clean energy.

Google will provide a $500,000 grant to Renewable Energy Buyers Alliance (REBA) in the U.S. and a €500,000 grant to RE-Source in Europe.

CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai said: ‘Sustainability has been one of Google’s core values from our earliest days. Over the years we’ve worked hard to reduce the carbon footprint of our operations, build products with people and planet in mind, and drive change at scale through our supply chains.’

However, despite this progress, Google has been accused of making contributions to companies who deny climate change.

This includes the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) a conservative policy group that was instrumental in persuading the Trump administration to abandon the Paris agreement and they have also donated unknown sums of money to the Cato Institute, which has shown opposition to climate legislation and questioned the severity of the crisis.

In related news, Google has announced that 100% of the power that supports their cloud services is now generated from renewable energy – a target they set out just over a year ago.

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