The solar panels are part of the renewable energy sources that power Apple's European data center in Viborg. "There'll be some gas, but we believe based especially on the data published by the DOE, the predominant energy source for these data centers is going to be renewable energy," Shugar told CNBC in an interview Thursday. Whereas older data centers may have been 100 to 200 megawatts in size, some of the "monster data centers" today may be as big as 1,000 megawatts, Shugar said. Microsoft, for example, recently signed a massive renewable energy deal with Brookfield Asset Management. The companies described the agreement as the largest renewable energy deal signed between two corporate partners to date.

---

Persons: Christoph Dernbach, Dan Shugar, Lawrence, Shugar, Goldman Sachs, Goldman Organizations: Getty, Big Tech, Wall Street, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Department of Energy, U.S, DOE, CNBC, Goldman, Microsoft, Brookfield Asset Management Locations: Hanstholm, Denmark, Viborg, Nextracker, California