Together, these projects will generate enough clean energy to power over 330,000 homes and will support hundreds of jobs, while providing tens of millions of dollars of investment in local communities across the U.S.
Amazon Wind Farm Texas includes more than 100 turbines – each over 300 feet tall with a rotor diameter more than twice the wingspan of a Boeing 787. Amazon Wind Farm Texas is built, owned, and operated by Lincoln Clean Energy (LCE), a leading developer of wind and solar projects across the U.S.
To thank and support the local community, Amazon is donating $50,000 to the Snyder Education Foundation to provide students and teachers with STEM learning opportunities.
“Investing in renewable energy is a win-win-win-win – it’s right for our customers, our communities, our business, and our planet,” said Kara Hurst, Amazon’s Worldwide Director of Sustainability. “We now have 18 wind and solar projects across the U.S. with more than 35 projects to come. These are important steps toward reaching our long-term goal to power our global infrastructure using 100% renewable energy. We’d like to thank the leaders at LCE, the Scurry County community, and our partners across the country who are helping us continue to bring new renewable energy online.”
“We’ve made a lot of progress on this commitment. AWS (Amazon Web Services) exceeded its goal of 40% renewable energy by the end of 2016, and set a new goal to be powered by 50% renewable energy by the end of 2017.”
In 2015, AWS announced the construction of Amazon Solar Farm US East, Amazon Wind Farm Fowler Ridge, Amazon Wind Farm US Central and Amazon Wind Farm US East, located in Virginia, Indiana, Ohio and North Carolina respectively. Amazon Wind Farm Fowler Ridge became operational January 1, 2016, and Amazon Solar Farm US East went into operation in October, 2016.
In 2016, AWS announced the construction of Amazon Wind Farm US Central 2, a 189 megawatt wind farm in Hardin County, Ohio. We also announced five additional solar farms: Amazon Solar Farm US East 2, Amazon Solar Farm US East 3, Amazon Solar Farm US East 4, Amazon Solar Farm US East 5 each have a capacity of 20 megawatts and are located in New Kent, Buckingham, Sussex, and Powhatan counties in Virginia. Amazon Solar Farm US East 6 is a 100 megawatt facility in Southampton County, Virginia.
These ten renewable energy projects will deliver a total of 2.6 million MWh of energy annually onto the electric grid powering AWS data centers located in the AWS US East (Ohio) and AWS US East (N. Virginia) Regions. The electricity produced from these projects is enough to power the equivalent of over 240,000 U.S. homes annually, which is approximately the size of the city of Portland, Oregon.