Google LLC and Shell PLC have partnered to extend the life of the NordzeeWind project, the first wind farm on the Dutch side of the North Sea according to Shell, by at least four years.
“We purchased 100 percent of the wind farm’s 108-megawatt capacity, which enabled Shell to pursue permit extensions and invest in crucial upgrades, preventing the premature loss of valuable clean energy”, the Internet giant said in an online statement. “This initiative helps to keep existing carbon-free energy resources on the grid that would otherwise have retired”.
Put online 2007, the project, off the coast of the village of Egmond aan Zee, produces enough power to cover 0.3 percent of Dutch demand, according to Shell. It consists of 36 turbines.
It has been fully owned by Shell since the British energy giant acquired the stake of 50-50 co-venturer Vattenfall AB in 2021.
Google said the deal represents “the first time a corporate PPA [power purchase agreement] has extended the lifespan of an offshore wind farm”.
“To date, we’ve supported over 1 gigawatt of clean energy generation capacity in the Netherlands through PPAs”, it added.
Google said last year its Dutch PPAs as of the time would help its data centers and offices in the western European country reach over 90 percent of carbon-free electricity that year.
Those PPAs include agreements with Shell and Eneco “to support 478 megawatts of carbon-free energy capacity with two new-to-the-grid offshore wind farms: HKN V and HKW VI”. Of the two joint offshore wind ventures, HKN V has been onstream since December 2023 while HKW VI is expected to start production 2026.
“These agreements [HKN V and HKW VI] support the development of these subsidy-free offshore wind farms, which are expected to contribute to about six percent of the country’s annual electricity consumption and will foster technology innovation and ecological development”, Google said in a press release February 1, 2024.
At the time, it also announced an agreement to support a 47-MW onshore wind project of Italy’s ERG. “Our current projections indicate that, once operational, this agreement will help our offices in Italy, as well as our Milan and Turin cloud regions, to reach more than 90 percent carbon-free energy on an hourly local basis in 2025”, Google said.
Google said then it was also following up its first PPA in Poland, signed 2023, with another agreement with GoldenPeaks Capital for 106 MW of solar generation. “This will add clean energy to the grid that our projections indicate will help our offices and cloud region in Poland achieve more than 90 percent carbon-free energy in 2025”, it said.
Additionally it agreed to help bring 84 MW to the Belgian grid through agreements with Aspiravi and Luminus.
Google aims to run its data centers and office campuses entirely on carbon-free power as part of its broader goal to achieve net-zero emissions across all its operations and value chain by 2030.
To contact the author, email jov.onsat@rigzone.com
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