Amazon Ramps Up Green Push With More Renewable Energy Deals

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(Bloomberg) Amazon.com Inc. struck deals to boost its access to renewable energy by almost a third as the company looks to get all of its power from green sources within a few years.

The retail giant will buy power from 3.5 gigawatts of new projects — mostly solar farms in the U.S. — to supply its offices, warehouses and data centers, it said in a statement. Amazon is seeking to bolster its standing as the world’s largest corporate green energy buyer as investors and consumers pressure big businesses to go greener, and has signed a number of deals in recent years.Power purchase agreements are a key way to scale up green energy. Buyers can use them to reach corporate sustainability goals, while developers benefit by having stable demand for electricity that can help underpin financing agreements to build new projects.

“There’s more competition in the marketplace for wind and solar deals,” said Nat Sahlstrom, head of global energy at Amazon Web Services. The cloud-computing unit’s data centers are a major contributor to Amazon’s electricity use. “That sends a strong signal to the market that there’s need for more renewable energy projects.”

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The latest round of Amazon’s accords dwarfs the 2.3 gigawatts of green-power deals signed by companies globally in the three months through the end of March, according to data from BloombergNEF. Its target to power operations with renewables by 2025 is five years ahead of an earlier goal. Amazon was previously regarded as slow to address its contributions to climate change.

The deals announced Wednesday include 2.9 gigawatts of solar farms in the U.S., encompassing two projects that also have a combined 225 megawatts of batteries to store renewable power for when the sun isn’t shining. Amazon is also adding rooftop solar installations at eight sites to power operations of its warehouses in Australia, Canada, India, Japan and the United Arab Emirates.

Terms of the power purchase agreements weren’t disclosed.