Amazon has announced a new 115 MW wind farm project in Ardderroo, Galway in Ireland. The wind power project will support the Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centers in the country. This new project will begin operating in 2022 and add to the company’s other upcoming projects in the country. Amazon already has an upcoming wind power project in Esk, Co. Cork which will come online in September 2020 and another one in Meenbog, Co. Donegal, in early 2022. Together these three projects will add 229 MW of renewable power capacity to Irish power grid every year.
These three projects will produce enough renewable energy to power 185,000 Irish homes per annum and are estimated to reduce carbon emissions by 366,000 tonnes of CO2 each year. All the corporate power purchase agreements (CPPAs) signed for these three wind power projects are unsubsidized. Thus, these unsubsidized CPPAs help Irish consumers avoid a significant cost on their energy bills, which would amount to an estimated Euro 229 million over the lifetime of the projects. Amazon has committed to offtake 100 per cent of the power from these wind power projects without relying on any public funding.
Amazon has made a public commitment to have 100 per cent of its global operations powered by renewable energy by 2025 (previously by 2030). In 2019, Amazon along with Global Optimism founded The Climate Pledge, a commitment to reach the Paris Agreement 10 years early and be net zero carbon by 2040. Started with $2 billion in funding from Amazon, The Climate Pledge Fund, will help in the development of sustainable technologies and services for Amazon and other companies to meet their carbon reduction targets. In July 2020, Verizon, Reckitt Benckiser (RB), and Infosys joined The Climate Pledge.