Story at a glance
- Amazon’s investment in wind and solar grew to 6.5 GW with the addition of 26 new projects in eight countries.
- That’s enough to power 1.7 million homes in the U.S. annually.
- The projects will supply renewable energy for Amazon’s corporate offices, warehouses and data centers.
Tech giant Amazon on Wednesday declared it is now the largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy in the world.
Amazon’s investment in wind and solar projects grew to 6.5 GW — enough to power 1.7 million homes in the U.S. annually — with the addition of 26 new solar and wind projects in Australia, France, Germany, Italy, South Africa, Sweden, the U.K. and the U.S.
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The new investments add an additional 3.4 GW of renewable power to Amazon’s portfolio.
The company now has a total of 127 renewable energy projects around the world, including 59 utility-scale wind and solar renewable energy projects and 68 solar rooftops on fulfillment centers and sort centers.
The projects will supply renewable energy for Amazon’s corporate offices, warehouses and data centers.
“Amazon is helping fight climate change by moving quickly to power our businesses with renewable energy,” Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO, said. “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 0f 2030.”
Last year, Amazon announced a sweeping pledge to take on climate change amid intensifying pressure from thousands of its employees around the globe. Bezos announced the company would commit to carbon neutrality by 2040 and 100 percent renewable energy by 2030, aiming to hit the goals of the Paris climate agreement 10 years ahead of schedule.
Google previously held the title as top corporate clean power buyer, with 5.5 GW of renewable power projects under contract.
The move by Amazon comes as a United Nations report released this week found that greenhouse gas emissions reached a new high in 2019. The report said the world is on track to see a temperature rise of more than 3 degrees Celsius this century as a result, far beyond the goal of keeping global temperature rise well below 2 degrees Celsius outlined in the Paris agreement.
This year is also expected to be one of the warmest on record.
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