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Amazon Focuses on Clean Energy to Power AWS Infrastructure

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Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN - Free Report) is gearing up for its upcoming projects associated with renewable energy initiatives. Markedly, the world is fast shifting to alternative energy and AWS is one among the many IT companies endeavoring to save the environment by switching over to green energy.

This time around, the firm has announced three new renewable energy projects in Ireland, Sweden and the United States to power Amazon Web Services (AWS) global infrastructure across the world.

The announcement is inline with the company’s commitment to gradually switch to using 100% renewable energy for the entire Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure that powers cloud computing services globally.

More on the headlines

Amazon is consistently making efforts to achieve clean energy goals.

In this regard, the company plans to buy power from a 91.2-megawatt (MW) wind farm in Ireland, Donegal. This project is expected to deliver clean energy by the end of 2021.

In addition, Amazon will purchase 91 MW of power from a new wind farm in Backhammar, Sweden. Further, its wind farm project in Tehachapi will bring up to 47 MW of energy capacity. Both the projects are expected to deliver renewable energy by the end of next year.

In total, these three projects will deliver more than 229 MW of power, which is expected to generate in excess of 670,000 megawatt hours (MWh) of renewable energy each year.

Once completed, these projects, coupled with the previous nine clean energy projects, will have the capacity to produce a total of more than 2.7 million MWh of electricity, sufficient to power around 262,000 households in the United States.

Focus on Carbon Neutrality

This initiative by Amazon is the latest in a string of clean energy investments made by U.S. technology giants in recent months. Amazon has been shifting focus from fossil fuels to clean energy for quite some time now. It aims at reducing carbon footprint, and using more renewable energy to power its huge AWS infrastructure as well as data centers.

Notably, many corporate behemoths including Google (GOOGL - Free Report) , Facebook , Microsoft and Apple (AAPL - Free Report) are progressively moving toward alternative energy sources to lower overall carbon emissions and cut their energy bills substantially.

Just last month, Microsoft inked two power purchase agreements (PPA) with EDP Renewables North America LLC to work on a wind energy project based out of Paulding County, OH. Also, Apple and Rio Tinto announced that they were looking for ways to develop a carbon-free project soon.

The shift to clean energy sources is definitely anticipated to reduce costs in the near term, which is a big positive and a very big reason for the tech companies to follow this course of action. Amazon can generate healthy returns from these solar and wind investments as there are many associated tax incentives.

In addition, adherence to environmental, social and governance (ESG) practices is expected to boost investor confidence and increase loyalty.

Wrapping Up

Green initiatives by big companies are expected to benefit overall environment with reduced global warming and fossil fuel consumption. Furthermore, renewable projects aidin economic development of the states involved, which adds a cherry on the cake.

Amazon.com, Inc. Price and Consensus

 

Amazon.com, Inc. Price and Consensus | Amazon.com, Inc. Quote

Zacks Rank

At present, Amazon has a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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