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Google (GOOGL) announced its first-ever Clean Transition Tariff-based (CTT) supply agreement, rolling out a new market rate structure aimed at accelerating the next generation of clean technologies, and facilitating investment in clean energy, while helping companies meet their climate goals.

Renewable energy purchases are often made through Power Purchase Agreements in which a buyer promises to buy a certain amount of power from a provider, incentivizing developers to build renewable projects. However, solar and wind power are highly intermittent, so grids often fall back on fossil fuels. The CTT was developed to invest in forms of energy that are more stable—firm power—from early stage technologies, such as geothermal, advanced nuclear and long-duration storage, that are poorly incentivized by current regulatory structures. The CTT structure matches clean energy generation and customer load to accelerate overall grid decarbonization.

The new agreement was signed under a new partnership with Berkshire Hathaway Energy (BRK-A, BRK-B) subsidiary NV Energy, based in Nevada. As part of the new partnership, Google and NV Energy assessed solutions to bring capacity to the local grid in Nevada, choosing geothermal energy.

Under the new agreement, Google, through NV Energy, has procured 115 MW of enhanced geothermal from Fervo Energy in Nevada to add to the grid and help Google toward its goal to operate its data centers and office campuses on 24/7 carbon-free energy (CFE) by 2030. A commercial pilot of the program proved that Fervo’s technology can deliver enhanced geothermal power at a commercial scale. Fervo has since made improvements and is expanding by almost 25x the amount of enhanced geothermal capacity enabled by Google.

Doug Cannon, President and CEO, NV Energy said:

“NV Energy and Google’s partnership to develop new solutions to bring clean, firm energy technology — like enhanced geothermal — onto Nevada’s grid at this scale is remarkable. This innovative proposal will not be paid for by NV Energy’s other customers but will help ensure all our customers benefit from cleaner, greener energy resources. If approved, it provides a blueprint for other utilities and large customers in Nevada to accelerate clean energy goals.”

According to Google, the new CTT structure can be replicated in electricity markets across the U.S. Google and NV Energy have also worked to propose a framework that can be customized to work in varying state regulatory environments to address state and customer goals.

In a post announcing the new partnership, Amanda Peterson Corio, Global Head of Data Center Energy and Briana Kobor, Head of Energy Market Innovation at Google, said:

“It’s not just Google that stands to benefit from this new model. If widely adopted across U.S. markets, the CTT structure can expand clean energy capacity and improve grid reliability, accelerate the roll-out of new technologies needed to enable clean industrial growth and bring the economic benefits of clean energy to communities everywhere.”

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