US online shopping giant Amazon announced on Wednesday that it will purchase all the electricity produced by two large wind farms under construction in Karijoki and Isojoki on Finland’s west coast.
Swedish energy company OX2 announced last week that it would invest 700 million euros in the Rajamäenkylä and Halsua wind farms. They will have a capacity of 472 megawatts (MW).
Amazon said that it will use its wind power investment as part of efforts to offset its total emissions. According to the company, this does not mean that it is planning to build a data centre in Finland.
Although Amazon has entered into a long-term power purchase agreement, the parks will remain in OX2’s ownership.
This is not the first time that a large multinational corporation has signed a long-term power purchase agreement for Finnish wind-powered electricity. For example, in 2019, Google announced an electricity deal with the Mutkalampi wind farm in the municipalities of Kokkola, Kalajoki and Kannus. With a capacity of 404 MW, it is now Finland’s biggest.
According to OX2, its plan for the Rajamäenkylä and Halsua wind farms is the largest renewable energy investment in the Nordic countries since 2022.
Aiming for carbon neutrality
Amazon already has contracts with nine other wind farms in Finland. Including the two new wind farms, it has contracts for 772 MW of production.
Amazon has data centres in neighbouring Sweden, where also owns nearly 800 megawatts’ worth of electricity generation capacity.
Amazon aims to be carbon neutral in all its operations by 2040. All of its European data centres already run on renewable energy.
In March, Amazon began selling carbon credits to its suppliers, business customers and other companies, which they can use to offset their climate-damaging carbon emissions.
Amazon said its credits will be available to companies that meet conditions including having a net-zero target covering their own emissions as well as those across their supply chain, and that measure and publicly report their greenhouse gas emissions, according to Reuters.
In February, just after his high-profile participation in Donald Trump’s second presidential inauguration, Amazon owner Jeff Bezos’ 10-billion-dollar climate and biodiversity fund withdrew its funding for one of the world’s most important climate certification organisations. The Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) assesses whether companies are decarbonising in line with the Paris climate treaty agreement. Earth Fund had been one of two core funders of the SBTi, with Sweden’s Ikea Foundation, reported the Guardian.