The e-commerce giant Amazon’s first operational wind farm outside the US turned online last week. The company will use the 91-megawatt project in Sweden for its Amazon Web Services data centers in the country.
New Amazon Wind Farm in Sweden
On a blog post on September 14, Amazon announced that its Bäckhammar wind farm project just went live. Furthermore, the tech behemoth expects the project to deliver 280,000-megawatt-hours of clean energy every year. Particularly, it is equivalent to powering 29,000 Swedish homes.
The launch of our wind farm in Bäckhammar, Sweden takes us a step closer to meeting our #TheClimatePledge commitments of being powered by 100% renewable energy by 2025. Read the full post here: https://t.co/QfAvqBWN81 #Sustainability @AWSCloud pic.twitter.com/HGEJUc8K9b
— AmazonNewsEU (@AmazonNewsEU) September 16, 2020
Actually, the wind farm in Western Sweden furthers Amazon’s green efforts. Its Climate Pledge aims to transition the company to solely relying on renewable energy by 2025.
More Renewable Energy
Meanwhile, Amazon also expects another wind farm in Västernorrland to operate by 2022. Combining with the Bäckhammar project, Amazon’s wind farms could produce 213 megawatts of clean energy.
Moreover, two other Amazon-commissioned renewable energy projects could commence this year in Europe. Similarly, the additional wind farms in Ireland and Spain will also power AWS data centers and other facilities from the tech giant.
Amazon’s Green Efforts Towards Decarbonization
The e-commerce giant’s green commitments, dubbed as “The Climate Pledge,” aim to obtain zero carbon footprint among its operations by 2040. Previously, the company announced it invested $2 billion for its efforts toward sustainability.
According to Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos, “The Climate Pledge Fund invests in visionary companies whose products and services can empower a low carbon economy.”
Furthermore, the company said it has a worldwide portfolio of renewable energy amassing 3,000 megawatts. Yearly, the projects could supply eight million megawatt-hours of clean energy.
Earlier this year, Amazon’s VP of sustainability, Kara Hurst, said that the company is a decade ahead of the Paris Agreement. Hurst also noted the significance of the effort, which could address Amazon’s carbon footprint worldwide.
