Amazon announces new renewable energy projects in the US and Ireland

Tech giant Amazon is to invest in two new renewable energy projects in the U.S. and Ireland. In an announcement Thursday, the firm said the projects – in Pittsylvania County, Virginia and Cork, Ireland – were expected to commence production in 2020. The project in Ireland will be a wind farm with 23.2 megawatts (MW) of capacity and is set to generate 68,000 megawatt hours (MWh) of energy per year. The facility in Virginia, a solar farm, will have 45 MW of capacity and produce an expected 100,000 MWh of energy each year. Capacity refers to the maximum amount that installations can produce, not what they are currently generating. The facilities, which will take the company’s number of renewable energy projects to 66, will be used to supply energy to data centers for Amazon Web Services. In the U.S., the company says its solar power projects have offset the carbon dioxide equivalent of over 200 million miles of truck deliveries. “Major investments in renewable energy are a critical step to address our carbon footprint globally.