Amazon announces first renewable energy project in Singapore

AWS Energy

A benefit of ground-mounted solar is the ability to optimally position the system to capture sun exposure as weather conditions change. When complete in 2022, the project will be among the largest aggregated movable solar energy systems designed and installed in Singapore, and it will contribute net-new renewable energy to the national electricity grid. The project is expected to generate 80,000MWh of clean energy annually, enough to power more than 10,000 homes in Singapore.

Amazon and Amazon Web Services (AWS) have been investing and growing in Singapore for more than a decade. The announcement today supports Singapore’s bold vision outlined in the Singapore Green Plan 2030, a 10-year plan with a whole-of-nation sustainable development agenda. Utility-scale solar energy projects, such as this Singapore project, align with the Green Plan’s key pillar of using cleaner energy and help Amazon meet its commitment to power its operations with 100 per cent renewable energy by 2030, a goal the company is on a path to meet five years early by 2025. This project will supply renewable energy for Amazon offices, fulfilment centres, and AWS data centres that support millions of customers globally.

In addition to adding net-new renewable energy to the electricity grids where it operates across the world, AWS has been, and remains, laser-focused on improving efficiency in every aspect of AWS infrastructure. From the highly available infrastructure that powers its servers to techniques AWS uses to cool data centres to the innovative server designs the company provides its customers, energy efficiency is a key goal of AWS’ global infrastructure. AWS’ scale allows the company to achieve much higher resource utilisation and energy efficiency than the typical on-premises data centre, and the AWS Global Infrastructure is built on AWS’ own hardware – purpose-built and optimised for workloads run by AWS customers.

According to a 451 Research report, AWS’ infrastructure was found to be 3.6 times more energy-efficient than the median of surveyed US enterprise data centres, with more than two-thirds of this advantage due to a more energy-efficient server population and higher server utilisation.

AWS also works with customers and partners to help them meet their own sustainability goals. By running their compute workloads in the cloud, customers and partners can benefit from AWS sustainability efforts and architect their workloads for high efficiency. 90 per cent of what AWS builds is driven by what matters for customers. To achieve their shared goals, the company focuses on four complementary areas: increasing energy efficiency in its facilities and equipment, continuous innovation in AWS data centres, advocacy to create a favourable environment for renewable energy, and working with various power providers around the world to increase the availability of renewable energy.

Investment in Asia-Pacific region

The Singapore project is AWS’ latest renewable energy investment in the Asia-Pacific region. Since 2019, it has announced three wind and solar projects in Australia and one solar project in China. Together, these projects contribute approximately 411MW of installed capacity and will supply more than 900,000MWh of additional renewable energy to local electricity grids.

To achieve its goals under The Climate Pledge, Amazon is committed to global investment in renewable energy generation to reduce carbon emissions from its worldwide operations.

Amazon’s Climate Pledge

In 2019, Amazon and Global Optimism co-founded The Climate Pledge, a commitment to becoming net-zero carbon by 2040, 10 years ahead of the Paris Agreement. Significant investments in renewable energy are a critical step to reducing Amazon’s carbon footprint globally.

Amazon is the world’s largest corporate buyer of renewable energy, and the projects it has enabled have the capacity to generate over 6.9GW and deliver more than 20 million MWh of energy annually. They include utility-scale wind and solar projects and solar rooftops on fulfilment centres and sort centres around the globe.

Over 50 other companies have already signed on and also committed to urgent action.

"Solving the world’s environmental and sustainability challenges is a task that no single organisation can take on alone, but working together, we can make a significant impact," said Amazon.

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