U.S. multinational retailer Amazon is synonymous with e-commerce business, but it is also one of the largest corporate purchasers of renewable energy in India - a commitment to buy about 1.1 gigawatt (GW) of electricity.
“All Amazon Web Service (AWS) Regions in India are powered 100% by renewable energy, and Amazon has 43 on-site solar projects on its facilities in India,”Abhinav Singh, Vice President, Operations, Amazon India informed Fortune India.
The company this week announced its 50th renewable energy project in India - its seventh utility-scale project - a 198-megawatt (MW) wind farm in Osmanabad, Maharashtra. With this, Amazon’s wind and solar farms in India generated an estimated $349 million (₹2,885 crore) in economic investment, and contributed $87 million (₹719 crore) to the local gross domestic product (GDP) from 2014 to 2022, offering 20,600 full-time equivalent jobs in 2022 alone, says a company press release.
In June 2023, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy announced it will invest $26 billion (₹2,14,942 crore) in India by 2030, including $12.7 billion (₹1,05,600 crore) in cloud infrastructure. Amazon Web Services AWS’s cloud infrastructure in India includes two AWS Regions located in Mumbai and Hyderabad.
Amazon has already announced a total of 43 rooftop solar projects, which are helping to power local Amazon facilities. Once all 50 projects are operational, they are expected to generate the energy equivalent to powering more than 1.1 million homes in New Delhi each year and will provide clean power for Amazon’s data centres, logistics facilities, physical stores, and corporate offices. Amazon’s 100MW solar farm in Bhadla, Rajasthan, is expected to be the first utility-scale project to become operational, according to the release.
Amazon targets net-zero carbon footprint by 2040. It is investing $15 million in nature-based projects to support communities, climate resilience, and biodiversity in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region, and the first US$3 million from the fund’s APAC allocation will support projects in India – beginning with a project in the Western Ghats to plant 300,000 trees – creating carbon sinks as well as enhancing wildlife conservation and livelihoods. Amazon also continues to transform its transportation network by electrifying its delivery fleet, and has more than 6,000 electric vehicles in its India delivery fleet alone, making deliveries in more than 400 local cities.