Sustainability, a new record for AWS: the latest move by the Cloud giant
With 206 projects worldwide, Amazon becomes the largest corporate buyer of renewable energy in the world, producing 2.5 GW of renewable energy, enough to power more than two million homes a year.
The Amazon Web Services Cloud can be “carbon neutral” not only because the virtualization of resources allows companies not to accumulate physical machines, decreasing the use of hardware and therefore of the maintenance and cooling processes of data centers, but also because Amazon is the largest buyer of renewable energy on the planet with 206 projects worldwide, enough to power millions of apartments every year. In addition, 71 utility-scale wind and solar projects and 135 solar rooftops on facilities and stores around the world will generate 8.5 GW of electricity generation capacity globally.
AWS and future projects
The sustainability projects will help provide renewable energy to corporate offices, fulfillment centers, Whole Foods Market stores, and Amazon Web Services data centers that power Amazon and millions of AWS customers around the world. The projects presented a few weeks ago in the United States concern wind and solar farms in America, Canada, Spain, Sweden and England.
This puts Amazon on track to power 100% of its operations with renewable energy. A new twist for the Seattle colossus that also in this case was able to intercept the needs of its time and get to lead the transformation. “We are helping to fight climate change,” said Jeff Bezos, who has shown himself to be very sensitive to environmental problems and critical issues related to climate change. “We are on track to achieve our goal of running 100% of our business on clean energy by 2025. We will get there five years ahead of the initial deadline of 2030. And this is just the first step to be taken to meet the commitment made with the Climate Pledge”.
The Climate Pledge is a project that concretely commits signatories to achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement 10 years ahead of schedule. A commitment that places Amazon as the first company promoting this paper. Specifically, we can say that the Climate Pledge commits 31 companies, including Microsoft, Siemens and Unilever, to reduce the net carbon emissions of their operations by 2040. “We’ve stopped being in the fold on this issue: we’ve decided to make a difference,” Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said.
Amazon’s commitment and leadership position in the field of sustainable development makes it an important company that is attentive to the changes and needs of the contemporary world.
“Amazon continues to play a key role in leading the company’s transition to renewable energy around the world and demonstrating that ambitious goals are achievable but also broadly beneficial,” said Gregory Wetstone, President and CEO of the American Council on Renewable Energy. “The company’s new clean energy projects bring them to a record total of 8.5 GW of global renewable capacity and include the first solar storage project that uses advanced technology to help deliver a clean and reliable grid.”
“Leading companies like Amazon,” said Abigail Ross Hopper, president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association
They know the value that solar and wind can bring to their businesses and the planet. We’re excited to see that Amazon is delivering on its climate commitments and investing in renewable energy resources around the world. Wall Street, clients , and international businesses are all watching what American companies are doing about climate change, and this kind of leadership can have a major impact on the climate crisis”.
Finally, it should be noted that the renewable energy projects are not the only ones in a Green key of the Cloud giant. In addition to its renewable energy efforts, AWS has implemented several initiatives to improve water efficiency and reduce the use of potable water for data center cooling. Yes, water. The most important and precious of the natural resources without which there would be no life on Earth.
