Here Comes Google's $94 Million Sun

Google is hoping it won’t be a long, cold, lonely winter, announcing a $94 million investment in four new solar projects today. The investment furthers the search giant’s interest in clean energy, bring its total investment in the sector up to a whopping $915 million. Today’s investment marks a milestone for the company’s direction, as well, as the four Recurrent Energy photovoltaic power plants will feed energy into the grid rather than to individual homes. The $94 million, alongside investments from the newly formed SunTap Energy (a venture run by global investment company KKR) will create plants that provide the grid with enough energy to power as many as 13,000 homes. Here comes the sun, indeed.

“We believe investing in the renewable energy sector makes business sense and hope clean energy projects continue to attract new sources of capital to help the world move towards a more sustainable energy future,” wrote Axel Martinez, the Assistant Treasurer of Google Treasury.

It’s been a busy year of clean energy investment for Google, which has put more than $880 million into the sector in 2011 alone. Among those projects is the Brightsource Ivanpah project, a 450-foot-fall solar power tower located in the Mojave Desert. Google invested $168 million in that project, the company’s largest investment to date. The clean energy investments are part of an ongoing initiative at Google to develop renewable power sources that are less expensive than coal, with the goal of converting entirely to clean energy by 2030.

As with earlier investments in clean energy, Google has a horse in this race. The company’s servers and storage facilities likely cost the company a pretty penny to run, and cheaper energy would mean less overhead cost for the gigantic company. Interestingly, Google Energy, a subsidiary of Google, has a permit from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to buy and sell energy at market rates, as if it were a utility company. (See: Is Google Becoming A Utility Company?)

“We want the ability to buy and sell electricity in case it becomes part of our portfolio,” a representative Niki Fenwick told CNET last year. Today they added $94 million worth of intrigue to that situation.

Via: Forbes