Google Buys Norther Offshore Wind Power

Engie has signed an agreement with Google to sell 92MW of energy produced by the Norther offshore wind farm in Belgium.

Google will use the energy from the 370MW project to power its data center in Saint-Ghislain in what represents the first time the technology giant buys power from an offshore wind farm.

The deal is part of Google’s 1.6GW-purchase of renewable energy, which is said to mark the biggest corporate purchase of its kind in history.

Together, the 18 new energy deals will increase the company’s worldwide portfolio of wind and solar agreements by more than 40%, to 5.5GW.

“Sustainability has been one of Google’s core values from our earliest days. We’ve been a carbon-neutral company since 2007. In 2017, we became the first company of our size to match our entire annual electricity consumption with renewable energy (and then we did it again in 2018),” said Thierry Geerts, Country Director at Google Belgium.

“Modern offshore wind turbines can be more than twice the size of onshore turbines, enabling us to bring large amounts of low-cost, clean electricity to the grid where our Belgian data center is located.”

Norther comprises 44 MHI Vestas 8.4MW turbines located some 23km offshore Zeebrugge. The 370MW offshore wind farm delivered first power to the Belgian grid at the end of February.