Google has signed an agreement with Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners K/S (CIP) to buy electricity from the Danish firm’s wind farm off Taichung, CIP said in a statement yesterday.
Through its fifth flagship fund, Copenhagen Infrastructure V, CIP and Google last month signed a corporate power purchase agreement to buy power from CIP’s Fengmiao I (渢妙一期) offshore wind project.
It is the first agreement Google has made to buy offshore energy in Taiwan as well as in the Asia-Pacific region, CIP said.
Photo: CNA
Located about 35km off Taichung, the Fengmiao I project secured site exclusivity and 500-megawatt (MW) grid capacity in Taiwan’s Round 3.1 auction and is the first of Taiwan’s Round 3 Offshore Wind Zonal Development projects to reach financial close, as well as start construction.
Giorgio Fortunato, head of clean energy and power for Asia Pacific at Google, said in the statement that the agreement with CIP represented a new chapter for the tech company, as the project would provide reliable electricity to support the firm’s data center, cloud region and offices in Taiwan.
It also represented an integration of offshore wind energy development in Taiwan and Google’s clean energy efforts, Fortunato said.
Fengmiao I is to build 33 units of CIP’s latest 15MW turbines, CIP said, adding that the project is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2027.
Fengmiao I — which has secured about NT$103 billion (US$3.17 billion) in financing from 27 international and Taiwanese banks and is gearing up to push for construction — is CIP’s most recent offshore wind project in Taiwan, after the construction of the Changfang (彰芳), Xidao (西島) and Zhongneng (中能) wind farms off Changhua County.
Thomas Wibe Poulsen, partner and head of Asia Pacific at CIP, said the agreement with Google regarding the Fengmiao I project was the second power purchasing agreement between the two sides.
In December last year, through CIP’s Energy Transition Fund, the two companies signed an agreement to buy renewable energy generated by the Zeevonk project in the Netherlands.
While tapping offshore wind energy in Taiwan, Google last week announced that it had signed a geothermal power purchase agreement with Baseload Power Taiwan Inc (台灣倍速羅得) to support clean energy development — its first such deal in the Asia-Pacific region.
Taiwan’s access to “substantial geothermal resources” could complement other renewable sources such as solar and wind, given the “significant potential” for using underground heat to generate clean electricity, Google said.
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