Being a member of RE100, Amazon aims to achieve 100% renewable energy in 2025, and currently has 62 units of public large-sized wind and solar farms planned. The company has now announced on the purchase of over 1GW green electricity, for which the investment on the 9 units of renewable energy farms pushes up Amazon’s investment in renewable energy to 206 units.
42% of the global energy demand for Amazon comes from renewable energy as of June 2020, and now the company has invested in a series of green electricity transactions in the UK, Sweden, Spain, US, and Canada. Although the sum of transaction was not disclosed, the capacity of green electricity can be elevated to 1.5GW in the future.
The initially stipulated target of 100% green electricity by 2030 for Amazon has been expedited to 2025, and zero carbon emission is set for 2040. Including the procurement this time, Amazon now has 71 extensive wind and solar farms, as well as 135 units of rooftop solar installations at its sorting center and dispatching center, with an installed capacity of over 8.5GW.
However, a number of green power plants are yet to be completed, including the 350MW offshore wind farm in Scotland, the 258MW wind farm in northern Sweden, as well as the 100MW solar farm and the 70MW cell storage system in California. The investment on the project in Scotland alone makes it the largest transaction of renewable energy in the UK. Amazon has also become the most prominent procurer of renewable energy by having acquired over 2.5GW of renewable energy capacity, which is enough to provide electricity for over 2 million household in Europe every year.
This is the second time for Amazon to be dipping in offshore wind power, following the purchase agreement of offshore wind power signed by the company in December 2020 that comprised of the purchase of Ørsted’s 900MW Borkum Riffgrund 3 offshore wind farm in Germany.
Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos commented that the 9 units of new wind and solar farms will prompt the renewable energy farms invested by the company to 206, and make it the largest enterprise buyer in renewable energy among Europe and the world. Bezos announced that Andy Jassy of AWS will take over in Q3 and participate in future projects of Amazon as the next CEO.
It is expected that there will be an increasing number of offshore wind power transactions around the world as the price of offshore wind power decreases continuously. A study conducted by 140 global wind power experts based on the commission by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory shows that the debut of larger and more effective wind turbines, as well as the lower operation cost, are very likely to reduce the cost by 17-35% by 2035, and another reduction of 37-49% by 2050.
(Cover photo source: Amazon)