Google announced a 12$ million in the new Lake Turkana Wind Power Project; this will be Google’s second investment in the continent. Previously, the company from from MountainView took part in a large investment in the Jasper Power Project, a mega-solar farm that supplies many cities in South Africa. Now, the Lake Turkana Project will supply power for up to 80,000 homes with 310 megawatts of energy for users in Kenya.
Why a company like Google should be interested in investing in green energy?
As stated on their official blog: “Since investing in the continent’s largest solar project, we’ve continued to see a big opportunity in fast-growing markets with rich renewable energy resources, where both the need and the potential are great. In fact, many countries are turning to renewables to help connect the nearly two-thirds of Africans that don’t have power today“.
And specifically on the Lake Turkana Wind Power Project: “Kenya ranks among the world’s fastest-growing economies and has goals of universal energy access and increasing capacity of the grid by 5GW by the end of the decade. Lake Turkana can help meet these goals. It offers one of the best wind resources in the world in terms of speed and consistency, and once operational, will deliver capacity equivalent to about 15% of Kenya’s current grid. It will also spur additional energy development in the region through a 266 mile transmission line that is being constructed to support the project“.
Surely their aims do not stop here.
Through this investment in sustainable and renewable energy sources, Google fulfills three important goals: providing expanded power access to all people, ensuring that power is available for Internet use expansion, and benefiting the planet by fulfilling intelligent energy goals.
The second one is many the most important. Giving access to cheap energy to million of users, Google is paving ahead the road to give African populations the possibility to connect to internet. This will give the company a huge advantage on the other internet providers, because the company ensures that abundant energy will always be available in areas in which it wants to expand Internet usage.
Acting in this way Google is meeting two very important goals: first is developing the use of renewables in developing country, which will give them the chance to avoid the fossil fuel trap; moreover, it is gaining a competitive advantage in terms of internet expansion and users that will access the Google’s services.
