Climate Change Haiku
Non-profit co-op
Sealed solar deal with Facebook.
Climate justice won.
18/12/13
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According to Walton EMC, the solar projects will be a boon to the area’s economy. Notably, corporates are starting to locate projects closer to demand. That could mean more renewables in the Southeast, where cheap power has been a draw for data centers.
Roe at Facebook said the company strives “to make sure these projects are on the same electric grid as the data centers they serve.” Roe pointed to a map that shows the local renewables projects supporting Facebook’s data centers around the country. The company is also working with the Tennessee Valley Authority to power a data center in Alabama with renewables.
TVA has also worked with Google for data centers in Alabama and Tennessee that will run on renewable power. In September, five tech companies including Salesforce and eBay pushed back against Dominion Energy’s proposal to build more natural gas in Virginia because companies there increasingly want to power data centers with renewable energy.
“These sustainability goals are often a part of a corporation’s decision on where it might relocate, or where it would locate a new facility,” said NRECA’s Warren.
Smith said the draw of co-ops may also push more and more corporate renewables projects into smaller communities.
“This might be a model that would really attract big corporations out into what are typically underserved communities that were not necessarily as advantageous for IOUs to build into,” said Smith. “A lot of the time, the reason why cooperatives and municipal utilities exist is because it’s in a region that otherwise wouldn’t be served power. It’s not financially beneficial for IOUs to run lines out to a relatively small load.”
Warren said co-ops building out more solar is a result of demand from consumer members. The trend has also been helped along by the decline in solar costs.
Nature Order Zociety 