How Google closes clean energy deals in as little as 2 months
With new standardized contracts, Google aims to scale the amount of ‘carbon-free’ energy supplying its data centers. Read More

Image via Shutterstock/Sai Thaw Kyar
Google bought more than 1.5 gigawatts of renewable energy over the past 12 months using a streamlined contracting approach that closed deals in as little as two months. Previously, these negotiations often took 10 months to a year.
The new process
Google’s new process compresses the usual steps associated with executing power purchase agreements, a type of contract for procuring electricity generated by solar or wind farms.
Google has standardized the process with a contract template that balances risks associated with these sorts of deals between the buyer and seller — addressing issues ranging from performance criteria to price fluctuations for supplies to grid interconnection delays.
That clarifies terms the parties are willing to accept, shortening the negotiation process, said Amanda Peterson Corio, global head of data center energy for Google, in a corporate blog.
The difference it makes
Typically, renewable energy procurement contracts involve a protracted process in which the buyers and sellers negotiate over their preferred terms and “meet in the middle” as a compromise. The new contract eliminates much of that back and forth.
“This new way of doing business has become our standard for wind and solar PPAs, and we’re exploring ways to contract for additional types of carbon-free energy generation and storage,” Corio said in late March. The contracts specifically cover deals in North America and Europe, although Google is examining its potential for other geographies.
Deals that are ‘fast — warp-factor-10’ fast
Companies use power purchase agreements to buy enough renewable energy to match their actual energy consumption. Many of these contracts cover projects located far away from a company’s actual facilities, but businesses can apply the renewable energy certificates associated with these projects to claim emission reductions. Each renewable energy certificate represents the addition of 1 megawatt-hour from a source such as solar or wind farms to the grid.
Between 2010 and 2022, Google signed more than 80 agreements for 10 gigawatts of power — the generating capacity of 31 million solar panels.
Last year, Google used the new contract model to negotiate a deal for four solar plants under development in the Netherlands by Kronos Solar EDPR. The energy will directly support the search giant’s data center in Eernshaven, allowing Google to operate the facility using “carbon-free” energy around the clock.
Within two weeks of selecting projects based on its original request for proposals, Google had a “signature-ready” power purchase agreement, according to Peterson. “Only 82 days passed between RFP close and contract execution,” she said. “In the world of clean energy, that’s fast — warp-factor-10 fast.”
The first transaction using the model — a contract for 100 megawatts of solar power to support the 24-hours seven-days-a-week carbon-free energy goal at Google’s data center in Council Bluffs, Iowa — took “weeks not months.”
Now more deals are possible
Aside from the faster negotiation time, Google pointed to other advantages of the new contract structure. Google needs to scale substantially to meet its goal of operating on carbon-free energy grids all the time by 2030.
- The ability to free up resources on its “relatively small” energy team to ramp up the volume of deals that it can get done and to focus on other thorny challenges, such as interconnection backlogs that have been delaying many U.S. renewable projects.
- Developers can lock down costs of projects more quickly, which likewise provides more clarity for buyers and reduces the potential for project delays, according to a Google spokesperson.
Set up to move quickly
To test the new process, Google partnered with LevelTen Energy, a renewable energy broker that also works closely with other big buyers of solar and wind power, such as Microsoft.
Rob Collier, LevelTen’s senior vice president of transactions, says it can be successful for deals of any size.
“What’s more important is that buyers interested in using LEAP have received all necessary internal approvals and are prepared to select projects and execute PPAs immediately following receipt of offers from developers.”
