The business case for wind power: Opinion (Google)
http://blog.nj.com/njv_guest_blog/2013/06/the_business_case_for_wind_pow.html
People sometimes ask why an Internet company like Google has chosen to invest in the Atlantic Wind Connection a multi-billion-dollar electric transmission backbone designed to carry power from offshore wind farms. The answer is simple: At Google, we believe investing in renewable energy makes business sense.
Energy is a critical driver of our business. We receive more than 3 billion search queries a day, show 6 billion hours of video on YouTube every month, and serve 5 million businesses with Google Apps and all that takes energy. As a company, Google is committed to using that energy efficiently and sustainably. Our data centers use half the energy of typical data centers, we build our campuses to the most efficient design standards, and weve purchased more than 260 megawatts of wind power.
Beyond our own operations, we want to help the transition to that clean energy future in another way by investing directly into projects. This allows us to diversify our capital while contributing to a clean energy future for ourselves, for the local communities in which we operate, and for our users around the world.
Since 2010, Google has committed more than $1 billion to renewable energy projects, including some of the worlds largest land-based wind farms, the largest solar power tower in the world, and both utility scale and residential scale solar photovoltaic systems.
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