Google continues to build on its Solar Energy Investment

PR: Ending the year with another clean energy investment.

Google has added another $94 million investment of four solar photovoltaic projects that is being built by Recurrent Energy near Sacromento, CA. This brings their entire investment in Solar Energy to $915 million. They have also committed themselves to providing funding to help more than 10,000 homeowners to install solare PV panels on their rooftops. They go on to state that this $94 million investment represents a much larger scale result than the individual rooftop installations providing a total capacity of 88 MW of energy, equivalent to the electricity consumed by more than 13,000 homes.

Google isn’t the sole investor in this project. They are investing with KKR and Recurrent Energy.Google’s posting states:

We’re joining KKR on their first renewable energy investment in the U.S. We believe investing in the renewable energy sector makes business sense and hope clean energy projects continue to attract new sources of capital to help the world move towards a more sustainable energy future

The energy produced by these projects is already contracted for 20 years with the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD). SMUD recently created a feed-in tariff program (FIT) to help green the grid for Sacramento-area residents. We’re excited that these projects are the first to be built under the program.
We’ve had a busy year at Google. Since January, we’ve invested more than $880 million in clean energy projects. We believe the world needs a wide range of solutions—from wind, to transmission, to solar PV and concentrated solar—and we look forward to new opportunities next year to further expand our portfolio of clean energy investments.