Google to invest in solar energy company NGP

• Author: Lisa Wang / Reporter

Google said on Monday it plans to invest in New Green Power Co (NGP, 永鑫能源), a solar energy company owned by BlackRock Inc., to build 1 gigawatt of solar power plants in Taiwan that will provide clean energy to the company’s local data center and offices.

“Our investment in NGP, subject to regulatory approvals, will serve as growth capital for 1 GW of new solar projects, catalyzing critical equity and debt financing for these projects,” Amanda Peterson Corio, Google’s global director of data center energy, wrote on a company blog.

Financial details were not disclosed.

“We expect to be able to procure up to 300 megawatts of solar power from this pipeline under power purchase agreements and their associated energy attribute certificates (Taiwan Renewable Energy Certificates or T-RECs) to help meet electricity demand for our data center campus, cloud region, and offices in Taiwan,” Corio wrote.

Since 2013, Google has operated a $600 million data center in Changhua County.

The company can go a step further and offer some of that clean energy to its semiconductor and manufacturing partners in the region, which will help them meet their sustainability goals while helping Google reduce its scope 3 emissions, or indirect emissions, from its value chain, Corio wrote.

“As demand for digital services, powered by AI and data center technologies grows, investing in clean energy is becoming a necessity,” David Giordano, global head of climate infrastructure at BlackRock, said on the Google blog.

Google’s new investment in solar energy has boosted the stock prices of the country’s largest solar module makers amid expectations that the large-scale clean energy project will spur local demand for solar modules, given Taiwan’s complete solar supply chain.

Google’s plan to generate 1 gigawatt of solar power represents 40 percent of the nation’s solar power installations, which totaled 2.5 gigawatts last year.

Shares of Motech Industries Inc (茂迪), TSEC Corp (元晶) and United Renewable Energy Co (聯合再生) rose 9.95 percent, 10 percent and 9.81 percent yesterday to close at NT$34.25, NT$31.35 and NT$14.55, respectively.

Google’s latest solar energy project could help solve Taiwan’s limited green energy supply.

To address the issue, the Taiwan Photovoltaic Industry Association (台灣太陽光電產業協會) said it had proposed to the country’s largest energy buyers, mainly technology companies, to expand their clean energy capacity, and most of them agreed.