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For the past five consecutive years, the tech and retail giant Amazon has been the worlds largest buyer of renewable energy, investing in projects and signing power purchase agreements (PPAs) around the world. pv magazine spoke with company representatives about its ambitious energy plans. As PPAs have proliferated in markets around the world in recent years, Amazon has emerged as the largest buyer in several regions, and by some margin. In 2023, analyst BloombergNEF tracked 8.8 GW of renewable energy generation capacity contracted by the US retail giant, spread across 74 PPAs in 16 different regions. This figure is more than double the 3 GW acquired by Meta, Facebooks parent company, in the same year. Amazon says it is currently involved as an energy buyer or investor in more than 600 solar and wind projects worldwide, ranging from small rooftop photovoltaic installations to triple-megawatt solar and wind installations. As of 2023, the company claims these agreements cover 100% of its energy usage. Today, however, the energy contracted under these agreements does not directly correspond to Amazons daily energy consumption. Many consider strategies to align renewable energy production with daily consumption, via the grid, to be the next step for the PPA market, with buyers eager to demonstrate emissions reductions as a result of their investment. Amazon, however, takes a different approach. “We want to make the grids greener alongside our own operations,” says Patrick Leonard, director of energy strategy at Amazon Web Services (AWS). “Rather than just serving our consumption, hour by hour, we measure success in terms of reducing overall grid carbon emissions.” Leonard added that this strategy has led AWS to focus on projects in regions where grid electricity has particularly high emissions. A January 2025 Amazon press release stated that the company’s nine projects in India avoid 55 times the emissions of the same renewable energy capacity added in Sweden, due to the higher percentage of coal powering India’s grids. Network improvements In regions with a higher proportion of renewable energy, an Amazon representative said its next step is to deploy energy storage to help deliver solar and wind electricity for longer periods. To date, Amazon has approximately 2.7 GW of energy storage projects and energy firming technologies in its pipeline, noting that it has participated in several battery projects in California that help reduce reliance on fossil fuels during off-peak solar generation times. As a major energy consumer, Amazon also needs to consider the electricity available to power its data centers and other operations. As part of its expansion plans in Mississippi, the company has announced its intention to develop 650 MW of new renewable energy capacity in the state, alongside its new data centers. Beyond grid decarbonization, the Amazon representative had little to say about the offtaker benefits that support Amazons massive procurement of renewable energy. Frugality is one of our leadership principles, so we focus on the economics, the spokesperson said. But the case for these projects depends on where we are in the world and how we participate, whether as offtakers or in some other structure. Betting on nuclear Amazon plans to continue investing in solar, wind, and storage energy in the coming years. It is also making significant investments in nuclear energy, which it considers an important piece of the puzzle. Wind and solar are great, and storage alongside them helps add a few hours, says the Amazon representative. But the grid needs more and more power at all times. Based on this need, the company has decided that nuclear power is a viable option and has made several investments in this technology. These include plans to locate a new data center near the Susquehanna Nuclear Power Plant in Pennsylvania and enter into a PPA with its owner, Talen Energy. We want to benefit from the investments already made in carbon-free energy, the Amazon spokesperson said. Were building a data center very close to that power plant, and its an opportunity to meet that customer need for AWS to grow while also protecting the viability of carbon-free energy. Amazon has also invested in X Energy, a US company developing small modular nuclear reactors, in a deal under which it hopes to have commercially generated power by the early 2030s. Amazons perspective is that there are technologies that are commercially viable today and others in the advanced nuclear space that require investment to succeed, the Amazon spokesperson said. I think theres a place for both, and were willing to innovate where there may be a little more risk and uncertainty, given our size and scale. Regarding renewable energy, the retailers representative indicated its willingness to work with new technologies emerging on the market and to be among the first to use them, pointing to the recent use of new installation robots in a US solar project in which it is involved. However, there are no investment plans to support the next generation of solar and battery technology, as the company appears to be doing with advanced nuclear systems. |
