Datacenter Forum
updated: 20-10-2020 | 07:37
The Project in Bäckhammar is part of company’s Climate Pledge commitment to run its operations on 100% renewable energy by 2025 and be net zero carbon by 2040.
Amazon’s first operational wind farm outside of the United States has come online in Sweden - the first in a series of the company’s utility-scale renewables projects due to begin delivering clean energy to grids across Europe this year. The 91-megawatt Bäckhammar project in Western Sweden will support Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centers in the country, and the expanding Amazon retail business. It is expected to deliver 280,000-megawatt hours of clean energy annually into the Swedish grid - the equivalent of powering 29,000 average homes in Sweden.
The wind farm’s launch takes Amazon one step closer to meeting its Climate Pledge commitments of being powered by 100% renewable energy by 2025, and of achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2040, ten years ahead of the Paris Agreement.
“We are proud that our wind farm in Sweden is the first Amazon utility-scale renewable energy project outside of the US to go online,” says Guido Bartels, Managing Director, Nordics, AWS. “We have been investing and growing in Sweden for almost a decade, and this affirms our commitment to creating a sustainable future not only for our company, but also for the communities where we operate.”
Supplying clean energy across Europe
The 91-megawatt Bäckhammar project is the first of two Amazon renewable energy projects to come online in Sweden. The second, a 122-megawatt onshore windfarm in Västernorrland, currently in construction, is expected to commence operations in 2022. In total, these projects will add 213 megawatts of new clean energy to the Swedish grid.
The two sites in Sweden are part of the eight renewables projects - six wind and two solar - the company has announced so far in Europe, designed to supply clean energy to the electricity grids that serve AWS data centers and other Amazon facilities. In addition to Bäckhammar, two more of these projects - in Ireland and Spain - are also due to come online later this year. They will all deliver clean energy into the grids through unsubsidised Corporate Power Purchase Agreements (CPPAs).
