Investments
We need smart capital to spur innovative renewable energy technologies.
Google makes renewable energy project investments that offer attractive returns while also helping to transform the clean energy sector—and we’re willing to take calculated risks for these kinds of investments.
We’re willing to spend the extra time to better understand technologies or projects, so we’re more comfortable making earlier stage investments or investing when typical investors are unwilling to provide capital. By doing so, we are helping provide critical resources to fund companies with potentially breakthrough technologies, and projects deploying a range of renewable energy technologies.
To date, Google has invested over $100 million in the clean energy sector. Google.org has made investments in innovative clean technology companies, spanning a range of technologies (eSolar Inc., AltaRock Energy, Inc, Potter Drilling and others). Google.org also has a team of engineers doing research and development through our RE<C initiative aimed at creating utility-scale renewable electricity that is cheaper than coal in years, not decades.
More recently, Google has made project investments that offer a solid return on investment and a potentially transformational impact on the sector
- A $38.8 million investment in two North Dakota wind farms that generate 169.5 megawatts (MW), enough to power 55,000 homes. The wind farm uses some of the latest wind turbine technology and control systems to provide one of the lowest-cost sources of renewable energy to the local grid.
- An investment in the critical development stage of a project to build a transmission backbone off the mid-Atlantic coast to accelerate offshore wind development, with the potential to connect 6,000MW of wind, enough to serve 1.9 million households.