Amazon has signed 300MW worth of wind and solar power purchase agreements (PPA) in India.
The company this week announced a deal with Vibrant Energy, a subsidiary of Macquarie Group's Green Investment Group (GIG).
The two wind & Solar hybrid projects represent a total of 300MW of renewable energy capacity and will be based in the states of Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka.
Once operational, these projects are expected to generate 1,163,000 megawatt hours (MWh) of clean energy. Combined with three solar farms in Rajasthan, Amazon now has five utility-scale renewable energy projects in India, representing more than 720MW of capacity.
“As the largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy globally, we continue to build momentum for our renewable energy investments in India. The two new projects represent Amazon's first wind-solar hybrid projects globally,” said Abhinav Singh, director – customer fulfillment, supply chain and global specialty fulfillment, Amazon India. “We are on a path to powering our operations globally with 100 percent renewable energy by 2025 and have worked with government and industry stakeholders in India to unlock more corporate renewable energy procurement in the country. This year, we have reached over 720MW of renewable energy capacity through utility-scale projects in India.”
AWS operates two cloud regions in Mumbai and Hyderabad. The company is planning Local Zones in Chennai, Kolkata, and Bangaluru, with one local Zone in Delhi launching in October. There are currently 33 Amazon CloudFront Edge locations in India: Mumbai (10), New Delhi (7), Chennai (7), Bangalore (4), Hyderabad (3), and Kolkata (2).
In August the company leased 5.5-acres in the Powai area of Mumbai from Indian conglomerate Larsen & Toubro Ltd, (L&T), which again is expected to house a data center. October saw the company acquire more than 50 acres in Thane outside Mumbai.
“This collaboration between Vibrant and Amazon will encourage the adoption of renewable energy by corporates in India. We expect India to be one of the earliest markets in the world to deliver renewable energy through similar hybrid projects. We are honored to collaborate with Amazon on its path to powering its operations with 100% renewable energy by 2025,” said Srinivasan Viswanathan, CEO of Vibrant Energy.
Vibrant Energy’s portfolio currently contains 132MW of operational projects, in the process of delivering 1.6GW worth of projects, and an active development pipeline of 2GW+. The company is a majority-owned subsidiary of Blueleaf Energy, itself a portfolio company owned by Macquarie’s Green Investment Group.
Already the world’s largest corporate purchaser of PPAs, this week also saw AWS sign 600MW worth of PPAs with Brookfield, including a project in India.