Brookfield and Microsoft sign 10.5GW renewables deal – 'largest ever' corporate PPA
Brookfield and Microsoft sign 10.5GW renewables deal - 'largest ever' corporate PPA | Windpower Monthly
Brookfield announced it had signed an agreement between Microsoft and its clean energy subsidiary Brookfield Renewable which will help Microsoft fulfil its goal for 100% of its electricity consumption to come from renewable energy sources including wind by 2030.
To meet its target, Microsoft needs to rapidly increase the amount of energy it sources from renewables amid growing demand for its cloud services which are powered by massive data centres.
The agreement builds on almost 1GW of renewables Brookfield previously agreed to provide, prior to signing the new deal.
“This first of its kind agreement, which is almost eight times larger than the largest single corporate PPA ever signed, is a testament to our ability to reliably deliver clean power solutions at scale to our corporate partners and accelerate the energy transition," said Connor Teskey, CEO of Brookfield Renewable.
Brookfield said the agreement includes potential development of new renewable energy capacity in the US, Europe, Asia-Pacific, India, and Latin America, encouraging the company to rapidly expand its renewables portfolio in the coming years.
Other tech majors are pursuing renewable energy PPAs in an effort to decarbonise their data centres, such as Google, which signed PPAs with Ørsted, Enerco and other wind farm developers to buy clean energy for its data services in the US and Europe.
Related Knowledge Center: ENERGY BASICS: renewables
Renewable energy sources — once the fuel of the future, then practical in specific, narrow applications — are increasingly economic mainstream sources of power generation. Hydropower was long the mainstay of U.S. renewable electricity generation, although wind power surpassed hydro for the first time in 2019, and solar continues its rapid growth. The continued growth of wind and solar, with their fluctuations, is tied in part to improvements in storage technology: batteries.