Google invests in BlackRock renewable energy player amid race to power AI boom
Tech giant to make capital investment in Taiwan solar specialist New Green Power
Google will invest in a Taiwanese renewable energy developer owned by finance giant BlackRock amid AI-driven power demand growth.
The tech behemoth will make a capital investment into solar developer New Green Power, owned by BlackRock’s Climate Infrastructure business, to help support development of a gigascale pipeline.
Like fellow tech giants such as Amazon and Meta, Google has signed multiple power purchase agreements (PPAs) that offer a route to market for the power they produce.
On this occasion it said it will make a capital investment in New Green Power “to serve as development capital toward its 1GW pipeline of new solar projects, catalysing critical equity and debt financing for those projects”.
Google said it subsequently expects to take 300MW-worth of energy from the portfolio to help power its data centre and other operations; and could also offer part of that to its suppliers on the island, helping to achieve its supply chain sustainability targets.
The size of Google’s investment was not disclosed and is subject to regulatory approval.
The US tech group said nations in "Asia Pacific face unique challenges with adding new carbon-free energy, including land constraints, low availability of commercially scalable wind and solar resources, and high construction costs".
Google's latest move comes ahead of a projected boom in power demand fuelled by AI and other advanced IT-related functions that is expected to make data centres a key component of the future global energy mix.
BlackRock’s Global Head of Climate Infrastructure David Giordano commented, “As we witness growth in demand for digital services, powered by AI and data-centric technologies, it becomes imperative to invest in clean energy.”
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