Today has some good news for Mother Earth. Google, the search and ads site, has been trying to be carbon neutral since 2007. Today they’ve signed a big deal – a 20-year deal, in fact – on green Power Purchasing.

Come July 30th they’ll be buying clean energy from the wind farm at the NextEra Energy Resources Story County II facility. That’s 114 megawatts of clean energy. What Google has wisely done is agreed a 20 year price for that energy.

That long purchase means the developer has financial security. They’ll be getting cash from Google for 20 years. That’ll allow the developer to build more clean energy projects.

I’m sure Google won’t mind having to wonder what the energy price will be like in 20 years either – although, I very much doubt this windfarm deal covers anything even close to the energy Google consumes all around the world. Google says it’s enough energy to supply several of its data centres.

It’s worth noting that Google still buys carbon offsets, trying to account for those emissions they can’t find away to avoid. Carbon offsetting has become far less popular in recent years with companies like Responsible Travel suggesting it doesn’t work.

In Pure Spirit

Is this a good, green and clean move from Google? Or do you think there’s a small of PR about this? Can it be both at the same time? Let us know what you think.