Google Inc. has invested $38.8 million in two North Dakota wind farms, the Internet giant's first direct investment in utility-scale renewable energy generation.
The Mountain View, Calif., company said in a Monday blog post that it invested in wind farms built by NextEra Energy Resources, a unit of FPL Group Inc. The wind turbines, made by General Electric Co., generate 169.5 megawatts of power, enough to serve more than 55,000 homes.
The investment marks a departure from Google's initial approach to renewable energy, which focused on investing in early-stage renewable energy companies such as BrightSource Energy, eSolar and AltaRock, which are developing new solar, wind and geothermal power technologies.
Google said it is investing directly in energy projects to accelerate the deployment of the latest clean energy technology, while providing attractive returns to Google and more capital for developers to build additional projects.
"We're aiming to accelerate the deployment of renewable energy—in a way that makes good business sense, too," wrote Rick Needham, Google's green business operations manager.
Google's stakes in the wind farms are in the form of "tax equity" investments, in which investors take over a project and use federal tax credits granted to the project to offset their own taxes as a return.
NextEra said it sold approximately $190 million of Class B membership interests in the two wind farms, with Google's stake represents about 20% of the Class B shares. The companies didn't immediately disclose the other investors.
The projects include a 120-megawatt wind farm in Barnes County, N.D., called Ashtabula 2, and a 49.5-megawatt wind facility called Wilton Wind 2, in Burleigh County, N.D.
The output from the facilities, which have been operating since last year, are being sold to utilities under power purchase agreements. A Google spokesman said the electricity generated by the wind farms wouldn't be used to power any of the company's data centers.
While Google's NextEra investment is not intended to finance any expansion at Ashtabula and Wilton, the Internet giant hopes its investment will enable the energy group to invest in additional wind power projects.
The wind farms are among more than 10,000 megawatts of wind power facilities built across the U.S. in 2009, according to the American Wind Energy Association. NextEra, which owns more than 7,500 megawatts of wind farms, is the nation's top wind power generator. The company also owns nearly 12,000 megawatts of mostly nuclear and natural-gas fired power generation.
In California, where Google is headquartered, utilities are required to use renewable sources for a fifth of the power they sell by the end of this year, with the mandate set to expand to one-third renewables by 2020 under pending regulations. Thirty-one other states and Washington, D.C., have renewable power requirements or goals, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
In 2008, about 7% of U.S. power supplies came from renewable sources, with about 7% of that amount from wind, according to the DOE.
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