Google Inc. (
GOOG
), the world's most popular Internet search engine provider has
announced that it will invest $200 million in a wind farm in west
Texas.
The company stated that the wind project is a 161-megawatt
facility built by EDF Renewable Energy and could generate
sufficient energy to power 60,000 homes. The energy harnessed
from this project is contracted to a utility company mainly
serving Texas and New Mexico.
Google has been focusing on renewable energy to power its data
centers. Since 2010, the company has made 10 other investments in
renewable-energy projects. These projects can together generate 2
gigawatts of power or enough to power 500,000 U.S. homes for one
year.
Currently, over 30% of Google's operations use renewable
energy to power data centers. The company has already completed
two large-scale Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) to buy renewable
energy from NextEra's Story County II facility in Iowa and Minco
II facility in Oklahoma.
In September last year, Google signed an agreement to buy wind
energy from the Grand River Dam Authority (GRDA) for its Oklahoma
data center.
Apple
(AAPL) also bought 200 acres of property in Catawba County for $3
million in an effort to run its North Carolina data center using
renewable energy.
The increased use of renewable energy by Google and other
cloud computing providers will help to reduce global warming and
fossil fuel consumption.
Google delivered a strong third quarter, with gross revenue
touching a record $14.10 billion. Revenues from both Google-owned
and partner sites, continued to grow double digits on a
year-over-year basis. Historically, Google has always fared
better than
Yahoo
(
YHOO
) search, which has been struggling for survival and
Microsoft's
(
MSFT
) Bing, which is yet to gain critical mass.
However, legal entanglements related to competitive matters or
patent infringements remain an overhang. Google retains a Zacks
Rank #3 (Hold).
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