Richard Needham, the Google director, announced that his company invested ZAR103 million, meaning US$10 million in the Jasper Project. The search engine giant believes that the African country can become a renewable energy driver for the entire continent.
Google’s director for energy and sustainability believes that there are points to take into account when analyzing PV investments. It can have an economic sense or it can attract other investments that will “bolster the growth of the renewable energy industry and move the world closer to a clean energy future”, in the director’s terms.
The failure of the Google’s investments is almost never revealed but Bloomberg did not failed to announce that the giant is one of the equity investors in the african PV project together with SolarReserve, a U.S project developer, development partner Kensani Capital Investments; Intikon Energy; the state-owned Development Bank of Southern Africa; non-profit organization P.E.A.C.E.; and state pension fund Public Investment Group.
The search engine giant never fails to announce its investments in renewable energy so Reuters says that the company funded $94 million of photovoltaic projects in California and launched a $280 million financing package with SolarCity for residential solar installations among with acquiring a 49% stake in a German solar project in 2011.
Roxana Moraru