Amazon Backs 26 Green Projects in Drive to Renewable Energy

Amazon.com Inc. on Thursday said it was backing 26 new wind and solar utility projects around the globe, a massive investment that the company said made it the largest corporate buyer of renewable energy.

The retail and technology company said the utility-scale projects, located in Australia, France, Germany, Italy, South Africa, Sweden, the U.K. and the U.S., would have the capacity to produce 3.4 gigawatts of electricity. Google, the largest corporate buyer of renewable energy in 2019, claimed the previous high water mark that year with a 1.6 gigawatt purchase in a single announcement.

“Amazon is helping fight climate change by moving quickly to power our businesses with renewable energy,” Amazon Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos said in a statement. The company didn’t provide a figure for the cost of the latest set of projects.

Amazon has said it aims to power its operations with renewable energy sources by 2025, five years ahead of an earlier target, and to become carbon neutral 15 years later. Thursday’s announcement was the latest sign of an increasingly ambitious sustainability push by the Seattle-based company, which was previously regarded as slow to address its contributions to climate change. Including the new deals, Amazon has backed 127 wind and solar projects, with 6.5 gigawatts of capacity.