KENYA:
According to Bloomberg, Vestas Wind Systems is looking for a buyer for its’s 12.5% stake in Lake Turkana wind farm after Google’s Aplhabet Inc. pulled out due to project delays.
A spokesman from Vestas, Anders Riss said: “Due to delays relating primarily to the transmission line, the Vestas’ agreement with Google to invest in the wind farm was canceled in 2019.”
The Kenyan government was forced to pay 85.6 million Euros, Ksh. 9.4 billion in compensation for the delays.
The 620 million Euro Lake Turkana wind power project would have been Google’s second renewable energy investment in Africa.
A representative of vestas intimated that their strategy did not include being a long-term wind park power owner hence the sale of their 12.5% stake.
The wind farm, with Vestas’ wind turbines and 310 megawatts (MW) capacity, has attracted the attention of investors interested in green energy projects.
Google’s interest in LTWP was disclosed by Norwegian investment company Norfund which has a six percent stake in the power plant. Besides the online advertising business, Google also runs other ventures including investments in renewable energy projects.
About Google
Google LLC is an American multinational technology company that specializes in Internet-related services and products, which include online advertising technologies, a search engine, cloud computing, software, and hardware. It is considered one of the Big Four technology companies alongside Amazon, Apple and Microsoft.[10][11][12]
Google was founded in September 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were Ph.D. students at Stanford University in California. Together they own about 14 percent of its shares and control 56 percent of the stockholder voting power through supervoting stock. They incorporated Google as a California privately held company on September 4, 1998, in California. Google was then reincorporated in Delaware on October 22, 2002.[13] An initial public offering (IPO) took place on August 19, 2004, and Google moved to its headquarters in Mountain View, California, nicknamed the Googleplex. In August 2015, Google announced plans to reorganize its various interests as a conglomerate called Alphabet Inc. Google is Alphabet’s leading subsidiary and will continue to be the umbrella company for Alphabet’s Internet interests. Sundar Pichai was appointed CEO of Google, replacing Larry Page who became the CEO of Alphabet.
The company’s rapid growth since incorporation has triggered a chain of products, acquisitions, and partnerships beyond Google’s core search engine (Google Search). It offers services designed for work and productivity (Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Google Slides), email (Gmail), scheduling and time management (Google Calendar), cloud storage (Google Drive), instant messaging and video chat (Duo, Hangouts, and Meet), language translation (Google Translate), mapping and navigation (Google Maps, Waze, Google Earth, and Street View), podcast hosting (Google Podcasts), video sharing (YouTube), blog publishing (Blogger), note-taking (Google Keep, and Google Jamboard), and photo organizing and editing (Google Photos). The company leads the development of the Android mobile operating system, the Google Chrome web browser, and Chrome OS, a lightweight operating system based on the Chrome browser. Google has moved increasingly into hardware; from 2010 to 2015, it partnered with major electronics manufacturers in the production of its Nexus devices, and it released multiple hardware products in October 2016, including the Google Pixel smartphone, Google Home smart speaker, Google Wifi mesh wireless router, and Google Daydream virtual reality headset. Google has also experimented with becoming an Internet carrier (Google Fiber, Google Fi, and Google Station).[14]
Google.com is the most visited website in the world.[15] Several other Google services also figure in the top 100 most visited websites, including YouTube and Blogger. Google was the most valuable brand in the world in 2017 (surpassed by Amazon),[16] but has received significant criticism involving issues such as privacy concerns, tax avoidance, antitrust, censorship, and search neutrality.