Long criticized for its disinterest in lowering emissions or using clean energy, Amazon.com is finally taking steps in that direction.
It is buying the output of a 150 megawatt wind farm in Indiana, being built by Pattern Energy Group and is even putting its name on it – Amazon Web Services Wind Farm. It’s expected to start operating late this year or in early 2016.
Amazon has a number of large datacenters in the area and has plans for more. This is one of many renewable energy projects in the works, says the company. In November, the company joined Google and Facebook in committing to getting to 100% renewable energy.
The wind farm will support Amazon’s cloud services which hosts many of the largest corporate and government clients, most of which want to run on renewable energy, not coal.
The project will be folded into Pattern’s Yieldco (Nasdaq: PEGI; TSE: PEG), the only one where investors can share in the yields of wind farms. The developer has 12 wind projects in its portfolio, totaling 1.6 gigawatts.
Amazon Web Services Wind Farm expands Fowler Ridge, one of the largest wind farms in the world. Spread across 50,000 acres, so far it has 355 turbines and 499.8 MW of capacity. Amazon’s portion will be the fourth phase – the goal is to reach 1 gigawatt.
And that’s not all – five other wind farms in Indiana add up to another gigawatt, ranking the state #13 in the US for wind capacity.
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