Wednesday, 01 September 2021
French headquartered utility Engie SA signed an agreement with Google LLC on 1 September 2021 to supply the tech giant's German operations with continuous green electricity.
The '24/7 carbon-free energy supply' agreement will see Engie put together and negotiate a 140 MW renewables portfolio consisting of wind and solar farms, and deliver the output to Google for three years. The deal will see that Google's German operations are nearly 80% carbon-free by 2022.
The deal also includes other services such as residual supply sourcing, balancing pool management, and grid management.
This is not the first electricity deal between the two industry leaders; in 2019 Engie and Google entered into a 5-year Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) for offshore wind in Belgium; this was followed up by another contract in the North Sea region, in the Netherlands.
Marc Oman, Senior Lead of Data Center Energy and Infrastructure at Google said: "Google has been leading the way towards a carbon-free future for over a decade, and as we look forward, our goal of running entirely on 24/7 carbon-free energy around the world by 2030 will require collaboration and partnerships with energy leaders like ENGIE, that are jointly committed to long-term, sustainable energy practices.”
Paulo Almirante, Senior Executive Vice President in charge of Renewable and Global Energy Management activities at ENGIE, said: "ENGIE is very pleased to collaborate once again with Google and extend both group’s existing partnership. As a leading player in renewables and with global expertise in decarbonization, ENGIE will significantly support Google with its ambitious carbon-free energy target. This contract illustrates how ENGIE developed innovative solutions to meet its customers’ specific needs: the Group can ensure 24/7 renewable energy supply either by building assets or by sourcing the power from different existing plants, thanks to its global energy management activities".
The around-the-clock sourcing strategy from Google fits within their goal of operating on 24/7 carbon-free energy by 2030, which includes hourly matching of Energy Attribution Certificates (EACs) and consumption. In the European green certificates context, standard Guarantees of Origin (GOs) alone are insufficient for this purpose. However, Google has been involved in developing T-EACs with the non-profit organisation M-RETS in the US; T-EACs are green certificates that will allow for hourly tracking.
The current electricity deal is part of Google's larger plan to invest the equivalent of 1.2 billion USD for its German operations, which will include spending in cloud computing infrastructure, along with renewable electricity.
Sources