Google buys wind power for Finnish data centre

Google has bought the entire electricity output from a Swedish wind farm developer for the next ten years to power its Hamina data centre (pictured) in Finland. The search engine […]

Google has bought the entire electricity output from a Swedish wind farm developer for the next ten years to power its Hamina data centre (pictured) in Finland.

The search engine giant has teamed up with German insurance company Allianz and a Swedish wind farm developer O2. It is Google’s fourth long-term renewable energy purchase contract and its first such deal in Europe.

O2 has been granted planning approval to build a new 72MW wind farm in northern Sweden, using efficient 3MW wind turbines, which has been financed by Allianz who will get ownership when the wind farm becomes operational in 2015.

In a statement, Google said: “As a carbon neutral company, our goal is to use as much renewable energy as possible – and by doing so, stimulate further production. The Maevaara wind farm not only allows us to make our already highly energy-efficient Finnish data centre even more sustainable, it also meets our goal of adding new renewable energy generation capacity to the grid.”

Google claims it has invested more than $1 billion (£0.64bn) in similar projects in the US, Germany and South Africa.

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