Moray Wind Farm, Scotland, UK. By Euan Brownlie @ Shutterstock.com
In the UK, Amazon has begun buying power directly from wind farms in Scotland. Maritime Executive reports:
Most offshore wind farms sell their electricity to a utility. Others are owned by a utility and provide the power to their own grid. A small number find a different way to market by selling some of the power to a really big consumer. An EDP/Engie joint venture off Scotland has succeeded in just that, and in a high-tech fashion: in two separate deals, the Moray West project has sold more than half its output to Google and Amazon.
In a contract announced Tuesday, Amazon has agreed to buy more than 470 MW of generating capacity from Engie, accounting for more than half of Moray West’s 880 MW capacity. The deal will support Amazon’s goal to run all its operations on renewable power by 2025.
“Projects like Moray West will play a critical role in decarbonizing Amazon’s operations and the UK grid, with this agreement demonstrating Amazon’s commitment to this ambition,” said Amazon’s director of energy for EMEA, Lindsay McQuade.
Amazon is the biggest corporate buyer of renewable power in the UK, the EU, and the world, and it added about one gigawatt worth of capacity to its portfolio in the region in 2023. The newly-announced agreement represents half of last year’s total.
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