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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