Amazon has announced its 50th carbon-free energy project in the UK, confirming its position as the largest corporate buyer of carbon-free energy in the country for the fifth year in a row.

Under a long-term energy deal known as a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA), Amazon will buy the carbon-free electricity generated by the Chirmorie Wind Farm in South Ayrshire, Scotland. The wind farm, developed by egg Power, will provide 90 megawatts of capacity once operational.

The investment brings Amazon's total UK carbon-free energy investment to 50 projects, including nine offsite wind and solar farms; and 41 onsite solar installations on logistics centers and other Amazon buildings.

It means Amazon has committed to enabling more than 1GW of carbon-free energy capacity in the UK once the projects are fully operational. Combined, the 50 projects will generate enough carbon-free energy to power the equivalent of more than 1.2 million UK households annually.

In the UK, Amazon’s low-carbon investments totalled up to £3.5 billion ($4.6 million) from 2021 to 2025, supporting up to 34,000 jobs and generating as much as an additional £2 billion ($2.6 million) in value to the national economy, according to an independent study by Frontier Economics published June 23, Powering the Low-Carbon Economy: How Amazon's Investments Boost Europe's Growth and Competitiveness.

Amazon has played a key role in scaling renewable electricity capacity in the UK, with these long-term purchase agreements giving developers the financial certainty they need to get built.

At a time when the UK is focused on moving away from expensive, imported gas and toward local renewable power, investments like these help spur the modernization of energy infrastructure, supporting a more stable, self-reliant grid and helping keep electricity costs affordable for families and businesses. Amazon's carbon-free energy investments don't just power its own operations—they add brand-new sources of carbon-free energy to the national grid, the same grid that powers homes, hospitals, and schools.

Zanskar currently operates the most productive pumped geothermal well in the United States at its Lightning Dock Geothermal power plant in New Mexico.

Amazon is investing in new carbon-free energy projects in Nevada to help power its future data center operations in the Reno area. The projects are planned to bring 700 megawatts (MW) of new carbon-free energy capacity onto the grid—enough to power the equivalent of more than 222,000 homes in the United States—and includes a combination of new geothermal power and solar-plus-battery-storage.

As part of this project, Amazon is working with local utility NV Energy to add 100 MWs of geothermal power from Zanskar, and 600 MW of solar plus 600 MW of battery storage from Primergy to the power grid. Amazon covers all costs associated with powering its data centers, including any new energy infrastructure and generation, ensuring those costs are not passed on to residents and businesses in the region.

Geothermal is a particularly exciting addition to Amazon’s carbon-free energy portfolio powering our data centers. Unlike other renewable sources that fluctuate with weather or time of day, geothermal harnesses the Earth's constant internal heat to generate power around the clock. This is Amazon’s first data center powered in part by dedicated geothermal power, and Amazon sees significant potential for it as a scalable source of firm carbon-free energy.

The 600 MW of solar plus 600 MW of battery storage is equally important. Battery storage brings much needed capacity to the Nevada grid, and allows for the capture of solar energy during peak production and dispatch it when it's needed most. This extends the value of solar generation well beyond daylight hours—exactly the kind of around-the-clock reliability data centers require.

These projects add to Amazon's carbon-free energy portfolio of more than 700 projects totaling over 40 gigawatts worldwide—enough to power more than 12 million U.S. homes. These investments don't just power Amazon’s operations—they add new sources of carbon-free energy to the grid that everyone relies on, helping keep electricity costs stable and affordable for families and businesses.

As the world's electricity demands continue to grow, Amazon is stepping up to help meet that need with carbon-free power—and doing so at an unprecedented scale. According to BloombergNEF's latest analysis, Amazon ranked among the top corporate buyers of carbon-free energy worldwide in 2025, with the largest such portfolio of any company on the planet.

To date, Amazon has committed billions of dollars toward more than 40 gigawatts of carbon-free energy capacity more than 700 projects in 28 countries. That's equivalent to powering more than 12 million U.S. households. But the impact goes beyond Amazon's own operations. Every new project adds carbon-free electricity to the shared power grid that serves homes, hospitals, schools, and businesses.

In addition to being a carbon-free energy procurement leader, Amazon is helping push the frontier of next-generation energy through investments in small modular reactor (SMR) technology, including a partnership with Energy Northwest in Washington state and a $500 million commitment to X-Energy that could deliver more than 5 gigawatts of new nuclear capacity by 2039.

Read the full story to learn more about how Amazon is helping to shape the carbon-free energy landscape.

Global energy use is evolving rapidly. From the surge in electric vehicles and spread of mobile broadband, to ecommerce and industrial manufacturing, our world is increasingly connected to the grid.

Here's a snapshot of how the world's energy use is changing.

1) Industry is the No. 1 driver of energy demand today

Global energy demand jumped 2.2% last year—the faster than the average rate over the last decade, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). Manufacturers and factories are consuming more electricity than ever to meet production needs, accounting for nearly 40% of the recent surge in global electricity use.

2) Air conditioning and smart devices are also demanding more power

While global energy use is still largely driven by the industrial sector, smart devices and appliances like phones, EVs and TVs are also consuming more energy. In 2024, extreme weather like record-setting heatwaves drove 15% of increased energy use as people depended on air conditioners and fans to stay safe.

3) Internet and social media use is growing

Internet traffic has more than tripled since 2019, driving demand for high-performance computing to support our social media, and the apps we use to check our bank account and use artificial intelligence.

4) Mobile broadband is more available than ever

Half of the world's population is now covered by 5G networks. This new era of connectivity is a strong foundation for AI with nearly 40% of companies now using AI tools to boost efficiency.

5) Data centers represented only 1.5% of electricity consumed worldwide

While energy use by manufacturing and factories made up the majority of global electricity consumption in 2024, data centers, which support technologies and keep our data secure, represented just 1.5% of electricity consumed worldwide.

6) Carbon-free energy is racing to meet growing energy demand

Carbon-free energy made up more than 80% of the total growth in electricity generation in 2024. Nuclear, battery storage, and renewables grew fast enough to offset the rising demand for energy, signaling a promising shift in the global power mix.

AWS recently testified in support of Oregon House Bill 3336, which would require utilities to file plans with the Public Utility Commission for implementing Grid Enhancing Technologies (GETs). Over the last year, AWS participated in workgroups convened by State Representative Mark Gamba. The legislation originated in one of the workgroups which aim to develop solutions to regional transmission issues. This collaborative process allowed a wide range of stakeholders to engage in thoughtful conversations prior to session which led to early and broad support from both industry groups and environmental advocates.

More than a decade ago, when AWS announced the launch of data centers in eastern Oregon, we established a long-term commitment to being an active member in the local communities. Since 2010, we've invested $37 billion in the state and supported 11,000 estimated average full-time equivalent jobs at local businesses annually in Oregon.

As our society relies on technology more than ever, global demands for grid capacity continue to grow. To help meet this demand, AWS works closely with utilities and grid operators to plan for future growth and where we require specific infrastructure to meet our needs, we work to make sure that we’re covering those costs and that they aren’t being passed on to other ratepayers. Amazon is also working with utilities and others to invest in new sources of carbon-free energy as part of our Climate Pledge commitment to meet net-zero carbon emissions across our operations by 2040.

GETs are hardware and software solutions that can be added to the existing power grid to make it smarter and increase capacity, flexibility, and resiliency. Although new transmission is needed, GETs can help relieve congestion and avoid increased costs for ratepayers. These solutions can also be implemented faster than traditional transmission infrastructure upgrades like building new transmission lines or substations.

AWS advocates for grid reform and works with energy regulators and policymakers to support policies that encourage grid operators to take a more forward-looking approach. That’s why we support the broad deployment of GETs and why we are urging policymakers and energy providers to take action to spur more GETs deployments in their jurisdictions.

By supporting HB 3336, we're investing not just in AWS's future in Oregon but in a smarter, more resilient power grid that benefits all Oregonians while advancing our shared climate objectives.

Amazon’s investments in new carbon-free energy projects have grown to more than 600 wind, solar, and battery storage projects globally, with more than 230 projects in Europe, the company recently announced. The company is also the world's largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy for the fifth year in a row globally, and is the top corporate purchaser for renewables in Europe in 2024, according to Bloomberg NEF. These investments support Amazon’s Climate Pledge commitment to achieve net-zero carbon emission across our operations by 2040.

Here are some of our top renewable energy accomplishments over the past year:

• In Europe, we added 46 new projects, including our first investment in Portugal to build the country’s largest wind farm, which is also the largest hydroelectric complex in the country.
• In Spain, we grew our portfolio to a total of more than 90 projects.
• In Japan, we doubled our renewable energy capacity across the country within a year.
• In India, we grew our total investments to 53 projects, which can generate enough energy to power the equivalent of over 1.3 million Indian homes annually.
• These projects not only help match the electricity consumed by our operations, but also provide new sources of carbon-free energy for local communities.

Learn more about our worldwide renewable energy projects here.

To do so, we’re investing in nuclear power, a critical energy source that can be brought online at scale and has a decades-long record as a reliable source of safe, carbon-free energy. We’re helping develop next-gen nuclear technology, investing in existing nuclear reactors, and supporting research on topics like nuclear fusion, and more – all to help power our operations more sustainably, and help everyone transition toward a carbon-free energy future.

Turbine Construction at Vermio wind farm

Amazon is investing in three new utility-scale wind farms in Greece, our largest renewable energy deal in the country to date. These wind farms will help match our electricity use in the region with carbon-free energy, while supporting Greece's goal of transitioning to more renewable electricity sources. The news was announced at AWS Day in Athens, with Theodoros Skylakakis, Minister of Environment and Energy, in attendance.

We continue to build our carbon free energy portfolio all around the world, and in Greece, we’ve signed four Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) that span three renewable energy projects. Two of the PPAs are for the Vermio wind farm, which is divided into Vermio North and Vermio South, spanning the Western and Central Macedonia regions. The other two PPAs enable the Mesokorfi and Koukouras wind farms in the Peloponnese region. Construction of these wind farm projects has already started, with power generation expected to begin in 2026. In total, the three wind farms are expected to generate enough carbon-free energy to power the equivalent of nearly 200,000 Greek homes annually. The energy from the projects will be delivered directly to the grid, helping power Amazon’s operations while benefitting other energy users, including local businesses, public institutions, and Greek households.

Turbine Construction at Vermio wind farm

The construction and long-term operation of the wind farms are also expected to support new employment and economic opportunities across the region. For the Vermio wind farm alone, more than 100 construction jobs have already been created, with up to 300 roles expected during peak activity on the site, according to Aer Soléir, a Dublin-headquartered developer and owner of sustainability infrastructure across Europe.

GRID Alternatives, the largest nonprofit installer of clean energy technologies in the U.S., in collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS) selected the 10 nonprofit organizations and community facilities across Eastern Oregon receiving rooftop solar installation as part of the $1.2 million contribution announced earlier this year.

The solar arrays at 10 locations across Morrow and Umatilla counties, such as senior centers, food pantries, transitional housing, and schools, will collectively generate up to 250 kilowatts of carbon-free electricity. This will help offset their utility costs, allowing these organizations to reallocate funds towards their core community missions.

Installations are scheduled to begin in November 2024. GRID Alternatives will handle the rooftop deployments at no cost over a five-month period. The recipients will own the systems as long as they want, and GRID Alternatives will manage long-term maintenance and performance monitoring plans.

As the energy needs of our business and customers continue to grow, we’re continuing to invest in renewables while also finding additional sources of carbon-free energy that can both help power our operations and bring new sources of energy to the grid. Nuclear power is one part of that mix—it can be brought online at scale, and has a decades-long record of providing a reliable source of safe carbon-free energy for communities around the world.

We recently announced that we’ve signed three new agreements to support the development of nuclear energy projects—including enabling the construction of several new Small Modular Reactors (SMRs). SMRs are an advanced kind of nuclear reactor with a smaller physical footprint, allowing them to be built closer to the grid. They also have faster build times than traditional reactors, allowing them to come online sooner.

• In Washington, our agreement with Energy Northwest, a consortium of state public utilities, will enable the development of four advanced SMRs. We also made an investment in X-energy, a leading developer of next-generation SMR reactors and fuel, and X-energy’s advanced nuclear reactor design will be used in the Energy Northwest project.
• In Virginia, we’ve signed an agreement with utility company Dominion Energy to explore the development of an SMR project near Dominion’s existing North Anna nuclear power station.
• In Pennsylvania, our agreement to co-locate a data center facility next to the Talen Energy nuclear facility will directly power our data centers with carbon-free energy, and helps preserve this existing reactor.

Farming is a high-risk, unpredictable business, and climate change is making it even more challenging due to increasing extreme weather events. But by investing in agrivoltaics—the combination of solar and agriculture, as well as dual land-use projects that combine farms and wind turbines, farmers around the world have new opportunities to grow their businesses while addressing climate change. Amazon is supporting several of these projects as it grows its renewable energy portfolio as part of our Climate Pledge commitment to reach net-zero carbon by 2040.

In Tunica County, Mississippi, third-generation farmer Abbott Myers has diversified his farm’s income by agreeing to host the state’s first wind farm on his land.

In Garrard County, Kentucky, Daniel Bell, a sheep rancher and owner of Hazelbrook Farm, has grown his flock and turned his farm into a multi-generational operation by offering grazing services to a nearby solar farm. And, over in Madison County, Ohio, researchers from The Ohio State University are studying how to scale farming alongside large solar energy projects.

Renewable energy projects like these provide benefits not only to farmers, but also to renewable energy developers and the local communities. Some of the benefits include:

• Farmers: More revenue sources and ecological benefits to their land, such as healthier soil and biodiversity, and an increase in land-use efficiency.
• Renewable Energy Developers: Unlock land availability challenges when trying to site new solar and wind projects.
• Local Communities: The projects can generate jobs, tax revenue, and new sources of energy to local communities.

Learn more about these projects here.

Power grids form the backbone of the U.S. electric system, responsible for balancing electricity supply and demand while delivering power to homes and businesses. This complex system is undergoing a massive transformation driven by an evolving energy landscape. The onshoring of manufacturing, electrification of transportation, and expansion of digital infrastructure are fueling a surge in electricity demand, while the country is simultaneously transitioning toward a more sustainable energy future. This confluence of factors presents an opportunity to harness the significant growth of carbon-free energy to meet this increasing demand. However, to fully capitalize on this opportunity, the U.S. will need a modernized and expanded power grid capable of quickly connecting, transmitting, and managing carbon-free energy.

Amazon is taking tangible steps to support these efforts, including innovating across the energy sector to bring new carbon-free power sources forward, encouraging investment in grid modernization technologies, and urging policymakers across the country to implement policies to accelerate grid modernization efforts.

Maximo, a robot owned and operated by one of Amazon’s renewable energy developer AES, is being deployed to Amazon-backed solar projects to help build them faster and safer. The first-of-its-kind AI-powered robot can reduce solar installation timelines and costs by as much 50%, which AES says is helping accelerate project timelines, creating new workforce opportunities, and making it far less strenuous for construction crews.

Maximo recently made its utility-scale debut at Oak Ridge Solar Farm in Louisiana—a project enabled by Amazon—where it successfully and efficiently installed solar panels while weathering high temperatures. The robot is now moving to support construction at another Amazon-backed renewable energy project in Kern County, California—Bellefield—which is the largest solar-plus-storage project in the U.S.

To conduct its work, Maximo uses AI features including computer vision and data to ensure precise panel placement, and real-time construction intelligence to inform its decision-making. The robot design process by AES included a range of Amazon Web Services (AWS) tools, including AWS RoboMaker, a cloud-based simulation service that enables robotics developers to run, scale, and automate simulation.

“AI is a critical tool that is already helping us develop sustainability solutions and address climate change at scale,” said Kara Hurst, Amazon’s chief sustainability officer. “As society’s energy needs grow, the demand for new solar and wind projects is also increasing, and we’re excited to collaborate with renewable energy developers like AES that are bringing new renewables to the grid, and prioritizing innovative technologies that can help accelerate those efforts.”

Amazon recently announced that we met our 100% renewable energy goal, seven years early. Making progress like that—especially with operations as complex as ours—isn’t easy, so we wanted to share more about how we were able to get it done. We used a variety of mechanisms, which included investing in new solar and wind projects, supporting projects in countries that still rely heavily on fossil fuels to power their grids (where renewable energy projects are needed the most), and purchasing Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs).

Amazon announced that we’ve met our renewable energy goal to match 100% of the electricity consumed across Amazon’s global operations—including our data centers, corporate buildings, grocery stores and fulfillment centers—with renewable energy, which we originally set to accomplish by 2030.

To get there, we’ve become the largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy in the world for four years running, and have invested billions of dollars in more than 500 solar and wind projects globally, which together are capable of generating enough energy to power the equivalent of 7.6 million U.S. homes.

Achieving this goal is an important milestone in our efforts to meet our Climate Pledge commitment of net-zero carbon by 2040. Looking ahead, we remain as committed as ever to getting there, and we’re continue to evolve our approach to incorporate additional forms of carbon-free energy, including nuclear energy, alongside our continued solar and wind investments.

“Reaching our renewable energy goal is an incredible achievement, and we’re proud of the work we’ve done to get here, seven years early. We also know that this is just a moment in time, and our work to decarbonize our operations will not always be the same each year—we’ll continue to make progress, while also constantly evolving on our path to 2040,” said Amazon Chief Sustainability Officer Kara Hurst. “Our teams will remain ambitious, and continue to do what is right for our business, our customers and the planet. That’s why we’ll continue investing in solar and wind projects, while also supporting other forms of carbon-free energy, like nuclear, battery storage, and emerging technologies that can help power our operations for decades to come.”

We’re constantly reevaluating how our data centers operate and determining ways to help them run on less energy and be more efficient. And as the world scales our use of AI, it's important to also minimize its environmental footprint.

A new study by Accenture shows that an effective way to do that is by moving IT workloads from on-premises infrastructure to AWS data centers around the globe. The research estimates AWS’s infrastructure is up to 4.1 times more efficient than on-premises, and when workloads are optimized on AWS, the associated carbon footprint can be reduced by up to 99%. This type of impact is possible by AWS optimizing our data center design, investing in purpose-built chips, and innovating with new cooling technologies.

For example, we’ve taken steps to design our data centers to use natural air flow to lower server temperatures, which can heat up while in use. This allows us to use less air conditioning when possible.

We’ve also designed our AWS machine learning chips, which power millions of workloads daily, to be more energy efficient. For example, AWS’s Graviton processor delivers high performance with high levels of energy efficiency. Graviton4 provides up to 30% better computing performance, 50% more cores, and 75% more memory bandwidth than current-generation Graviton3 processors, delivering the best price performance and energy efficiency for a broad range of workloads running on Amazon EC2.

We’re also keeping technologies in use longer by increasing the lifespan of our servers from five to six years.

As our society relies on technology more than ever, from consumer electronics to large-scale infrastructure in both public and private sectors, global energy demands are continuing to grow. At Amazon, we’re working to meet the future energy demands of our customers and our business while remaining committed to our Climate Pledge to become net-zero carbon by 2040. We know the path forward is changing, and our work to decarbonize our operations won’t be linear, so we’re constantly experimenting, learning, and evolving.