Online retail giant Amazon announced that it is expanding its renewable energy portfolio globally, with an additional 2.7GW of clean energy capacity across 71 new renewable energy projects.
This includes the company’s first renewable energy project in South America—a solar farm in Brazil—and its first solar farms in India and Poland. Once fully operational, Amazon’s global renewable energy portfolio will generate 50,000GWh of clean energy, which is the equivalent amount of electricity needed to power 4.6 million homes each year.
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“We are bringing new wind and solar projects online to power our offices, fulfillment centers, data centers, and stores, which collectively serve millions of customers globally, and we are on a path to reach 100% renewable energy across our entire business by 2025,” Amazon Web Services CEO Adam Selipsky said.
“Around the world, countries are looking to accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy, and continued investments like ours can help accelerate their journey as we all work together to mitigate the impacts of climate change.”
As the largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy globally, Amazon now has a total of 379 renewable energy projects across 21 countries, including 154 wind and solar farms and 225 rooftop solar projects, representing 18.5 GW of renewable energy capacity. By the end of 2021, the company had reached 85% renewable energy across its business.
To help scale the benefits of investments in the renewable energy sector as it continues to grow, Amazon is also working through the Clean Energy Buyers Institute’s (CEBI) Beyond the Megawatt initiative to ensure the industry is maximising the economic, environmental, and social impact of energy procurement.
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Amazon co-founded The Climate Pledge in 2019, committing to reach net-zero carbon by 2040—10 years ahead of the Paris Agreement. The Pledge now has more than 375 signatories, including Best Buy, IBM, Microsoft, PepsiCo, Siemens, Unilever, Verizon, and Visa. Amazon has also ordered 100,000 electric delivery vehicles, the largest order ever of electric delivery vehicles, and has started to roll them out across the US.
The company is also investing $2 billion in the development of decarbonising services and solutions through The Climate Pledge Fund.
