Amazon Web Services Announces Its Largest Renewable Energy Project To Date
Amazon Wind Farm US East is North Carolina’s first utility-scale wind farm.
Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) has announced that it has contracted with Iberdrola Renewables, LLC to construct and operate a 208 megawatt (MW) wind farm in Perquimans and Pasquotank counties, North Carolina, called the Amazon Wind Farm US East. This new wind farm is expected to start generating approximately 670,000 megawatt hours (MWh) of wind energy annually starting December 2016, or enough to power more than 61,000 US homes[1] in a year. When completed, it will be the first utility-scale wind farm in the state of North Carolina, with the energy generated delivered into the electrical grid that supplies both current and future AWS Cloud data centers.
In November 2014, AWS shared its long-term commitment to achieve 100% renewable energy usage for the global AWS infrastructure footprint. In April 2015, AWS announced that approximately 25% of the power consumed by its global infrastructure was from renewable energy sources with a goal of increasing that percentage to at least 40% by the end of 2016. As part of its renewable energy push, AWS is continuously working on ways to increase the energy efficiency of its facilities and equipment. Additionally, the company continues to launch projects that increase the availability of renewable energy resources on the electrical grids that supply power to current and future AWS Cloud data centers in Virginia and Ohio.