Amazon Announces Major Renewable Energy Agreement in Canada
375 MW solar farm in Vulcan County is Amazon's second renewable energy project in Alberta, bringing the company's investment in Canada to more than 450 MW, which will allow it to supply its local operations with more than 1 million MWh of renewable energy
Amazon is already the largest corporate buyer of renewable energy globally and continues to advance its ambition to power 100% of company activities with renewable energy by 2025—five years ahead of the original target of 2030
SEATTLE, June 23, 2021 /CNW/ - Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) today announced 14 new renewable energy projects in Canada, Finland, Spain, and the U.S. to advance its ambition to power 100% of company activities with renewable energy by 2025—five years ahead of the original target of 2030. The new projects bring Amazon's total renewable energy investments to date to 10 gigawatts (GW) of electricity production capacity—enough to power 2.5 million U.S. homes. Amazon is now the largest corporate buyer of renewable energy in the world.
The latest utility-scale solar and wind projects will supply renewable energy for Amazon's corporate offices, fulfillment centres, and Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centres that support millions of customers globally. These projects will also help Amazon meet its commitment to produce enough renewable energy to cover the electricity used by all Echo devices in use. These new projects support hundreds of jobs while providing hundreds of millions of dollars of investment in local communities.
"We're driving hard to fulfill The Climate Pledge—our commitment to reach net-zero carbon by 2040, ten years ahead of the Paris Agreement," said Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO. "Our investments in wind and solar energy in the U.S. and around the world send a signal that investing in green technologies is the right thing to do for the planet and citizens—as well as for the long-term success of businesses of all sizes across all industries everywhere."
Amazon will now have a total of 232 renewable energy projects globally, including 85 utility-scale wind and solar projects and 147 solar rooftops on facilities and stores worldwide. The 14 new wind and solar projects in the U.S., Canada, Finland, and Spain include:
- Our largest renewable energy project in Canada: Amazon's second renewable energy project in Alberta is a 375 MW solar farm that is also the largest in the country. When it comes online in 2022, it will bring Amazon's capacity in Canada to more than 1 million megawatt hours (MWh), enough to power more than 100,000 Canadian homes.
- New projects across the U.S.: The 11 U.S.-based projects announced today include Amazon's first solar projects in Arkansas, Mississippi, and Pennsylvania, and additional projects located in Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio. In total, Amazon has enabled more than 6 GW of renewable energy in the U.S. through 54 projects.
- Our first renewable energy project in Finland: Amazon's first project in Finland is a 52 MW wind farm located near the country's west coast. Once complete, the project is expected to begin producing energy in 2022.
- Additional investments in Spain: Amazon's fifth solar project in Spain will generate 152 MW when it begins contributing power to the grid in 2023, bringing total capacity in the country to more than 520 MWs.
To see Amazon's renewable energy projects around the world, visit our interactive map.
"This is great news for our province and for all Albertans. Amazon's investment in our province means jobs for Albertans, and furthers Alberta's reputation as a diversified energy powerhouse," said Alberta Premier Jason Kenney. "And, this is all using private sector money without subsidies from Alberta taxpayers. Alberta's government continues to show that we are one of the most open for business jurisdictions in North America. Thank you to Amazon for this vote of confidence in Alberta's economy and our diversified energy future."
"With abundant resources and talent, Alberta is seizing the global market opportunity of further private sector investments in reliable renewable energy. We welcome today's announcement to include Alberta, once again, in Amazon's goal to produce renewable energy as part of its ambition to power the company with 100% renewable energy by 2025," said the Hon. Jason Nixon, Alberta Minister of Environment and Parks.
"Amazon's investment shows how Alberta's energy sector remains an attractive investment target for companies from around the world. Our focus on investor-friendly policies and our energy-only electricity market unlocks new potential for our province's renewable energy sector. We look forward to the addition of this emissions-reducing project that adds to the wide range of energy sources which power homes and businesses in Alberta," said the Hon. Sonya Savage, Alberta Energy Minister.
"Amazon's announcement of a 375 MW deal doubles the total announced VPPAs in Canada this year. This transaction supports construction of the largest solar farm in Canada and expands Amazon's leadership as a corporate buyer of renewable energy. The scale of the PPA demonstrates continued growth of the Canadian renewables market," said Rebecca Nadel, Director of the Business Renewables Centre – Canada.
Amazon and Global Optimism co-founded The Climate Pledge in 2019, a commitment to reach the Paris Agreement 10 years early and be net-zero carbon by 2040. The pledge now has 107 signatories, including IBM, Unilever, PepsiCo, Visa, Verizon, Siemens, Microsoft, and Best Buy. To reach its goal, Amazon will continue to reduce emissions across its operations by taking real business actions and establishing a path to power its operations with 100% renewable energy, five years ahead of the company's original target of 2030; delivering its Shipment Zero vision to make all shipments net-zero carbon, with 50% net-zero carbon by 2030; purchasing 100,000 electric delivery vehicles, the largest order ever of electric delivery vehicles; and by investing $2 billion in the development of decarbonizing services and solutions through the Climate Pledge Fund. For more information, visit https://sustainability.aboutamazon.com/.
About Amazon
Amazon is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. Amazon strives to be Earth's Most Customer-Centric Company, Earth's Best Employer, and Earth's Safest Place to Work. Customer reviews, 1-Click shopping, personalized recommendations, Prime, Fulfillment by Amazon, AWS, Kindle Direct Publishing, Kindle, Career Choice, Fire tablets, Fire TV, Amazon Echo, Alexa, Just Walk Out technology, Amazon Studios, and The Climate Pledge are some of the things pioneered by Amazon. For more information, visit amazon.com/about and follow @AmazonNews.
About Amazon Web Services
For 15 years, Amazon Web Services has been the world's most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform. AWS has been continually expanding its services to support virtually any cloud workload, and it now has more than 200 fully featured services for compute, storage, databases, networking, analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), mobile, security, hybrid, virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR), media, and application development, deployment, and management from 81 Availability Zones (AZs) within 25 geographic regions, with announced plans for 21 more Availability Zones and seven more AWS Regions in Australia, India, Indonesia, Israel, Spain, Switzerland, and United Arab Emirates. Millions of customers—including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies—trust AWS to power their infrastructure, become more agile, and lower costs. To learn more about AWS, visit aws.amazon.com.
SOURCE Amazon Canada
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