In this episode of EnergyWakeup, we speak with Sam Arons from Google. Sam is the Lead, Tech and Infrastructure at Google. In short, he is responsible with bringing renewable energy to Google operations and behind the ability for Google to say that they power their operations with 100% renewable energy.
In December of 2016, Google shocked the energy world by announcing that they bought 2.6GW worth of renewable energy, almost all of it wind and matched their total operation’s energy usage with renewables.
Sam and I get into the details of where they are now and where they want to be. We dig into out this works using their FERC regulated subsidiary, Google Energy LLC as the offtaker of the energy in the RTOs across the globe. With the growth of corporate PPAs, we discuss how this market can expand using financial products available in the wholesale markets.
Google is also getting into policy and pushing investor owned utilities that have monopolies on providing renewable energy to corporate clients. One case was the green rider program that allowed Google to get over 60MW of solar from Duke Energy in North Carolina.
Sam sends a message to utility CEOs on what Google is looking for. I also ask him why Google is so far ahead of the other tech companies and what it will take to get more corporates into the market. Don’t miss this episode of EnergyWakeup.
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