Amazon has announced their first renewable energy project in Canada will be built in Newell County, Alberta.
The 80 megawatt (MW) solar farm will produce over 195,000 megawatt-hours (MWh) of renewable energy to the grid. According to a press release, that will be enough energy to power 18,000 Canadian homes for a full year.
Based on a map released by Amazon, the solar farm will be located in Lathom, about 150km southeast of Calgary. The company expects the project to come online sometime in 2023.
The company also announced 8 other renewable energy projects in the U.S., Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. With these new projects, and their 206 renewable energy projects around the world, Amazon expects to be able to operate entirely on renewable energy by 2025, five years ahead of their original target.
“With these nine new wind and solar projects, we have announced 206 renewable wind and solar projects worldwide, and we are now the largest corporate buyer of renewable energy in Europe and globally. Many parts of our business are already operating on renewable energy, and we expect to power all of Amazon with renewable energy by 2025—five years ahead of our original target of 2030,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO.
To help reduce their carbon footprint, Amazon has begun testing electric delivery vans built by Rivian. Amazon ordered 100,000 of the electric delivery vans in 2019, and hopes to have them all on the road within the next five years.
