INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Green Technology

Amanda Peterson Corio , Global Head of Data Center Energy , Google , on a new partnership with BlackRock ’ s Climate Infrastructure business adding solar capacity to the Taiwan electricity grid .

A partnership with BlackRock ’ s Climate Infrastructure business will help support the development of a 1 gigawatt ( GW ) pipeline of new solar capacity in Taiwan – advancing clean energy on the local electricity grid and our own 24 / 7 carbon-free goal .

As part of our partnership , we ’ re making a capital investment in New Green Power ( NGP ), a Taiwanese solar developer and BlackRock portfolio company , to facilitate the buildout of its largescale solar pipeline .

Fossil fuels generate nearly 85 % of Taiwan ' s electricity .

Companies can play a pivotal role in finding new strategies to grow the supply of available renewable energy sources and promoting emerging technologies that enable the full decarbonization of regional electricity systems .

Our investment in NGP , subject to regulatory approval , will serve as development capital toward its 1 GW pipeline of new solar projects , catalyzing critical equity and debt financing for those projects .

A significant share of our Scope 3 footprint can be traced back to the electricity grids that power our suppliers and users , which is why broad decarbonization – and partnerships like this – continue to be core to our net-zero goal .

The partnership builds on more than five years of collaboration to accelerate the clean energy transition through market and policy development across Asia Pacific .

Our advocacy and engagement efforts were a key driver of the 2017 amendment of Taiwan ’ s Electricity Act , which opened up the market to allow non-utility companies to directly purchase renewable energy .

This work led to us becoming the first corporate buyer to sign a PPA in the market .

We expect to procure up to 300 MW of solar energy from this pipeline through power purchase agreements ( PPAs ) and the associated energy attribute certificates ( Taiwan Renewable Energy Certificates or T-RECs ) to help meet electricity demand from our data center campus , cloud region and office operations in Taiwan .

We may offer a portion of this clean energy capacity to our semiconductor suppliers and manufacturers in the region so they can advance their own sustainability goals while helping us reduce our Scope 3 emissions ( the indirect emissions from our value chain ).

Since then , Taiwan has achieved a significant cumulative contracted capacity through corporate PPAs , becoming one of the leading corporate PPA markets in the APAC region .

We ’ re a founding member of the Asia Clean Energy Coalition ( ACEC ), which brings together energy buyers , suppliers and policymakers to help improve the policy and regulatory environment for corporate renewable electricity purchasing .

Coalitions like ACEC are essential to drive the system-level transformation required for a carbon-free future in APAC . p

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