On Tuesday, Google announced a major $280 million investment into SolarCity installations, a leading provider of solar rooftops in the United States.
In addition to Google taking a greater step into “greener pastures,” Google employees stand to benefit from the partnership as well. SolarCity is giving Google employees a discount on residential solar installations.
But, alas, Google didn’t work this deal just to enable its employees to enjoy solar power. Google has much bigger aspirations – a greener planet.
The deal was announced Tuesday on the Official Google Blog by Rick Needham, director of green business operations at Google.
Today, we’re announcing that we’ve investing $280 million to create a fund that will help SolarCity finance more solar installations across the country. This is our largest clean energy project investment to date and brings our total invested in the clean energy sector to more than $680 million.
“At Google,” writes Needham, “we believe the world needs a wide range of clean energy options in the future, each serving different needs. We’ve already invested in several large-scale renewable energy projects…We think ‘distributed’ renewable energy (generated and used right at home) is a smart way to use solar photovoltaic (PV) technology to improve our power system since it helps avoid or alleviate distribution constraints on the traditional electricity grid.”
Calling the investment a “quadruple-win” for Google, SolarCity, its new customers and the environment, Google pledges to continue to look for other renewable energy investments that make business sense and help develop and deploy cleaner sources of energy.
