Amazon Goes Green with Large Irish Windfarm

Written by Martin Lynch, European News Editor for Industrial Info (Galway, Ireland)--Online retail giant Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) has committed to building its biggest windfarm in Ireland to date that will support Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centres across the country.

The project in Ardderroo, County Galway, will have a capacity of 115 megawatts (MW) from 27 turbines and is expected to be commissioned in 2022. This is Amazon's third windfarm in Ireland and forms part of the company's pledge to be 100% powered by renewable energy by 2025. Industrial Info is tracking all three projects, including the smaller Meenbog windfarm project in County Donegal (91 MW) and in Esk, County Cork (23 MW). Together, the windfarms will add 229 MW of renewable energy to the Irish grid each year, reducing carbon emissions by 366,000 tonnes of CO2 and producing enough renewable energy to power 185,000 Irish homes annually.

Amazon employs 4,000 people in Ireland and has committed to boosting that by another 1,000 jobs in the next two years.

"Once all projects are operational, we will be the largest single corporate buyer of renewable energy in the country, and we won't stop here," Amazon stated. "You can expect to see us announce more renewable projects as we head towards our 100% renewable energy goal. All of this is helping Ireland to get on track to meet its 2030 renewable targets, all without any subsidies. We're not only investing in renewable energy to build a sustainable business in Ireland -- we're also innovating to preserve water. Water is a precious resource that we're committed to conserving and reusing where possible. To reduce both the energy and water we use in our Irish data centers, we use direct evaporative cooling systems, which predominantly utilizes outside air to cool our servers. This means that for more than 95% of the year we use no water to cool our data centers in Ireland." The projects also will be built without government subsidies. Amazon is the organisation in Ireland to sign unsubsidised Corporate Power Purchase Agreements (CPPAs). This will enable Irish energy consumers to avoid an estimated 229 million euro ($271 million) in Public Service Obligation (PSO) subsidy cost on their energy bills.

The project was welcomed by Ireland's inward investment promotion agency, the IDA, which highlighted that the data centre industry makes a large economic contribution to the Irish economy of around 1 billion euro per year. IDA Ireland's Executive Director Mary Buckley said: "Amazon's announcement today is a welcome contribution to Ireland's sustainability plan and builds on significant capital investment made in Ireland by Amazon Web Services over many years. The announcement of 1,000 additional jobs by Amazon last month, which will bring its total permanent workforce across Ireland to 5,000 by 2022, highlights the real substance of this sector."

Amazon's new data center in Tallaght, South Dublin, will support Ireland's first, custom-built sustainable district heating solution. The 'Tallaght District Heating Scheme (TDHS)' will provide low-carbon heat to public sector, residential, and commercial customers from recycled heat, supplied from the AWS data center. The scheme will initially heat 47,000 m2 of public sector buildings, 6000 m2 of commercial space, and affordable apartments.

Industrial Info Resources (IIR), with global headquarters in Sugar Land, Texas, six offices in North America and 12 international offices, is the leading provider of global market intelligence specializing in the industrial process, heavy manufacturing and energy markets. Our European headquarters are located in Galway, Ireland. Follow IIR Europe on: Facebook - Twitter - LinkedIn For more information on our European coverage send inquiries to info@industrialinfo.eu or visit us online at Industrial Info Europe.