This month, retail and technology company Amazon announced the purchase of 26 new utility-scale wind and solar energy projects, making it the largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy in the world. The projects, located in the United Kingdom, Sweden, South Africa, Italy, Germany, France, and Australia total 3.4 gigawatts (GW) of electricity production capacity.
This cap to 2020 brings the total annual investment in renewable energy to 35 projects equaling over 4 GW of capacity – the largest single-year corporate investment in renewables. Overall, Amazon has invested in 6.5 GW of wind and solar projects, enough to power 1.7 million homes in the United States for a year.
Google used to hold the ‘biggest corporate buyer’ title with 5.5 GW of renewable energy projects under contract. It also held the ‘greatest purchase in a single go’ title with 1.6 GW in 2019. Amazon has surpassed both records by a lot.
Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder, and CEO said:
Amazon is helping to fight climate change by moving quickly to power our businesses with renewable energy. With a total of 127 solar and wind projects, Amazon is now the biggest corporate buyer of renewable energy ever. We are on a path to running 100% of our business on renewable energy by 2025 — five years ahead of our original target of 2030. This is just one of the many steps we’re taking that will help us meet our Climate Pledge.
The projects will supply clean energy to the company’s fulfillment centers, corporate offices, and Amazon Web Services data centers that support its millions of customers worldwide. They’ll also push the company towards reaching its net-zero carbon emissions targets by 2040. Amazon has also purchased 100,000 electric delivery vehicles as part of its Shipment Zero vision to make all shipments net-zero carbon – the largest order of electric delivery vans ever.
Bezos said:
I couldn’t be prouder of all the teams across Amazon that continue to work hard, smart, and fast to get these projects up and running.
Amazon even started a $2 billion climate pledge fund, and Bezos has pledged $10 billion of his own money to fund action on climate change. However, despite all these efforts, the company’s carbon footprint continues to rise. In 2019, its greenhouse gas emissions grew by 15%, and this year will probably be worse since everyone has been shopping online due to the pandemic.
