The Australian arm of Japanese tech giant Fujitsu has committed to source around one-third of its annual national electricity needs from wind power, through a deal with CWP Renewables’ 270MW Sapphire Wind Farm in northern New South Wales.
Fujitsu Australia said on Thursday that, starting June 30, 2022, the power purchase agreement would offset around 30,000 tonnes of the company’s annual carbon emissions and source renewable electricity equivalent to around 40 per cent of its NSW data centre load, or about 30 per cent of its annual Australian electricity consumption.
According to its website, Fujitsu owns and operates six data centres strategically located across Australia, the largest of which is a 92MW IT load facility in Western Sydney. Also in NSW it has a 3MW load facility in Homebush and a 4.8MW load facility in North Ryde.
“As a large energy user in Australia, we want to use that scale to support renewable energy generation and the NSW regional economy,” said Fujitsu Australia CEO Graeme Beardsell.
“Data centres are energy-intensive to run and by increasing our sourcing of renewable energy our data centre customers will also benefit from a reduction in their own carbon footprints, specifically their scope 3 emissions.
Looking forward, we will continue to explore opportunities in our region to invest in power purchases from renewable projects.”
Already, Fujitsu had installed a 99.6kW rooftop solar system at its 2MW Eight Mile Plains data centre in Queensland; a job that was completed by Bunjil Energy, a First Nations owned-business. Beardsell says the company will continue to explore opportunities to invest in power purchases from more renewable projects.
CWP Renewables CEO Jason Willoughby applauded Fujitsu Australia for the PPA, which he said was not only contributing to the transition to net zero emissions, but supporting ongoing regional investment.
These days, large organisations are increasingly signing up for renewable energy offtake deals through a third-party retailer, such as the University of Sydney has done with Snowy’s Red Energy, and announced earlier this week.
But the renewable energy industry continues to stress the importance of corporations and other organisations signing up to buy the output from specific wind and solar projects – particularly projects that are still trying to get built – to support ongoing investment in the sector.
Back in 2016 when the Sapphire wind farm was gearing up for construction near Glen Innes, the project secured up to $120 million in debt finance from the Clean Energy Finance Corporation to both demonstrate the bankability of large-scale renewables projects in Australia and help allay concerns about merchant risk.
As the fifth and final winner of the ACT’s large-scale wind reverse auction, Sapphire had secured a 20-year feed-in tariff from the territory government for 100MW of the project’s output, but the remainder was to be traded on a merchant basis. In 2018, another 50MW of the project’s output was contracted to emerging retailer, Flow Power.
For Fujitsu Group, the offtake deal for the Australian business will boost its progress towards a company-wide emissions reduction target of 71.4 per cent by 2030, compared with 2013 levels.
Across the ditch in New Zealand, meanwhile, it has been using 100 per cent renewable energy in its operations since April 2020.
