Google's 13 data centers and assorted offices consume about 5.7 terawatt hours of electricity annually as the company provides search, Gmail, YouTube videos and more to the world's populace -- about as much energy as is consumed by the typical American city on an annual basis.
In an announcement posted on its Google blog page on Tuesday, the company said because of the vagaries of power grids and regulations around the world, it will achieve its milestone by offsetting every megawatt hour of electricity supplied by a power plant running on fossil fuels with renewable energy that it has purchased through a variety of contracts.
About 95 percent of Google's renewable energy deals come from wind power farms, with the remainder from solar power.
Google signed its first agreement to purchase all the electricity from a 114-megawatt wind farm in Iowa, in 2010. Today, it says, it is the world’s largest corporate buyer of renewable power, with commitments reaching 2.6 gigawatts (2,600 megawatts) of wind and solar energy.
"Over the last six years, the cost of wind and solar came down 60 percent and 80 percent, respectively, proving that renewables are increasingly becoming the lowest cost option," the blog post said. "Electricity costs are one of the largest components of our operating expenses at our data centers, and having a long-term stable cost of renewable power provides protection against price swings in energy."
The Mountain View, Calif.-based company said its 20 current renewable energy projects not only help Google meets its green energy goals, but also help support communities, from Grady County, Oklahoma, to Rutherford County, North Carolina, to the Atacama Region of Chile to municipalities in Sweden.
"To date, our purchasing commitments will result in infrastructure investments of more than $3.5 billion globally, about two-thirds of that in the United States. These projects also generate tens of millions of dollars per year in revenue to local property owners, and tens of millions more to local and national governments in tax revenue.," the blog said.
"As we look to the immediate future, we’ll continue to pursue these direct contracts as we grow, with an even greater focus on regional renewable energy purchases in places where we have data centers and significant operations," Google said.
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