Google has partnered with Japanese SSD firm Kioxia to offtake power from a hydropower retrofit project in Japan's Chubu region.

The project, which is owned and operated by the Chubu Electric Power group, is expected to support the decarbonization efforts of both companies.

Kioxia has already begun to offtake power from the facility, which is ultimately expected to supply the company with 160GWh of energy per year. This, Kioxia has said, will support its goal of sourcing 100 percent of its energy requirements from renewable sources by 2040 and achieving net zero by 2050. The offtake agreement will supply the company with “round-the-clock” energy and will also support Google in reducing its Scope 3 emissions. The exact capacity that Google has agreed to offtake has not been disclosed.

Commenting on LinkedIn, Spencer Low, head of Regional Sustainability, APAC at Google, said: “The project was enabled by a Google-led effort to bring additional, cost-efficient clean electricity to manufacturers in Japan. By focusing on revitalizing existing infrastructure, Kioxia and Google are championing a practical and impactful approach to increasing the availability of clean power in Japan.”

The exact project that is tied to the agreement has not been disclosed. Chubu Electric owns and operates approximately 5,477MW of hydropower capacity across more than 200 locations in Japan. As part of its hydropower strategy, the company is retrofitting and redeveloping older, long-operating plants to boost their output and efficiency.

Google has signed two renewable energy supply agreements in Japan to support operations at its sole data center in the country, located in Inzai. It signed its first Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) last year with Clean Energy Connect and Shizen Energy, totaling 60MW across two solar projects.

It followed this up in September with a 15MW virtual PPA with Japanese power generation company Jera.