Google invests in Danish data center and green energy

Google, a subsidiary of Alphabet, will invest 4.5 billion Danish crowns (about 600 million euros) in building a new data center in Fredericia, Denmark. That’s what Reuters says. It will also invest in green energy in Denmark.

The internet giant has decided to actively look for new investment opportunities in green energy in Denmark. The company says it will evaluate various wind and solar energy projects both on land and at sea. The exact identity of the projects is unknown.

Wind energy is a major sector in Denmark. It is home to turbine manufacturer Vestas Wind Systems and Orsted, a developer of offshore wind farms. In September, Google already announced that it had signed a ten-year agreement to buy green energy from three new wind farms being built in Finland. This energy must be used for one of the data centres of the search giant.

The company has been focusing on green energy for some time now. Earlier this year, for example, it announced that Google Cloud is fully powered by renewable energy. At the time, the company even managed to report that it was producing more green energy than was needed for its data centres and offices.

In the course of 2017, one kilowatt hour of renewable energy was purchased for each kilowatt hour of energy used. That energy came from a wind or solar farm that was specially built for Google. Urs Hölze, Senior Vice President for Google’s technical infrastructure, said the company was the first public cloud service and enterprise of this size to achieve this.

Data center

The new data centre in Fredericia will have 150 to 200 employees when it is completed in 2021. Last year, the Internet giant bought another lot in Denmark. That’s in Aabenraa, next to Apple’s planned data center. Facebook is also planning to build a data centre in Denmark.