Amazon India has announced its first set of utility-scale renewable energy projects in India – three solar farms in Rajasthan, totalling a combined clean energy capacity of 420 megawatts (MW). These include a 210 MW project to be developed by ReNew Power; a 100MW project by Amp Energy India; and a 110MW project to be developed by Brookfield Renewable.
Collectively, these solar farms have the capacity to generate 1,076,000 megawatt hours (MWh) of renewable energy per year. This is enough to power over 360,000 average-sized households in New Delhi annually.
“At Amazon, we have worked hard to collaborate with and engage government and industry stakeholders on corporate power purchase agreements for renewable energy in India,” said Abhinav Singh, Director – Customer Fulfilment, Supply Chain and Global Specialty Fulfilment, Amazon India.
23 new solar rooftop projects
In addition, Amazon announced 23 new solar rooftop projects on its fullfilment centres across 14 cities, which will generate an additional 4.09 MW of renewable energy. This brings the total number of solar rooftop projects in India to 41 with 19.7 MW of renewable energy capacity, which will contribute to powering Amazon’s fulfilment network in India.
We are bringing new wind and solar projects online to power our offices, fulfillment centers, data centers, and stores, which collectively serve millions of customers globally, and we are on a path to reach 100% renewable energy across our entire business by 2025.
“Around the world, countries are looking to accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy, and continued investments like ours can help accelerate their journey as we all work together to mitigate the impacts of climate change,” he added.
Dinesh Dayanand Jagdale, Joint Secretary for the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) said, “We are pleased to see how policy reforms by the government over the last several years are enabling use of renewable energy by the Industry thus providing means to achieve their sustainability goals.”
He added, “We have been working with industry to creatively unlock more such private sector investments in renewable energy projects. We hope that the policy reforms that we have enacted in India to enable this will serve as a model globally for countries seeking to bring corporate renewable energy investments to accelerate their transition to a greener energy future.”
Pinaki Bhattacharyya MD & CEO Amp Energy India, said, "We are proud to partner with a global brand like Amazon on their renewable energy push. This project also supports the government’s Digital India mission of transforming India into a digitally empowered society powered by renewable energy."
Largest solar corporate power purchase
Amazon’s partnership with ReNew Power is one of the largest solar corporate power purchase agreement by a technology company in India. This will be the largest single business-to-business (B2B) project that ReNew Power is developing in India.
Sumant Sinha, Founder, Chairman and CEO of ReNew, said, “As we support India’s historic clean energy transition, our work with global leaders such as Amazon is critical in decarbonizing the corporate sector and the broader economy. Leading organizations like Amazon set an example for other companies globally to adopt clean energy sources and, accelerate the energy transition, a pre-requisite to meet our net-zero goals.”
With Brookfield, Amazon has executed over 500 MW of renewable energy PPAs globally, besides the 110 MW initiative now in India. Nawal Saini, Managing Director, Renewable Power and Transition, Brookfield said, “We are pleased to work with Amazon on their journey towards becoming 100% renewable energy powered. The new Bikaner solar park development is being undertaken as a part of the Brookfield Global Transition Fund, our inaugural impact fund focusing on investments that accelerate the global transition to a net-zero carbon economy.
The investment in India is part of Amazon's bigger vision of expanding its renewable energy portfolio globally, with an additional 2.7GW of clean energy capacity across 71 new renewable energy projects. Amazon now has a total of 379 renewable energy projects across 21 countries, including 154 wind and solar farms and 225 rooftop solar projects, representing 18.5 GW of renewable energy capacity.
