Amazon gas and their zero carb emission Climate Pledge

Human-induced climate change is a real and serious threat and action is needed. This is why Amazon gas has created The Climate Pledge. This is to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2040, ten years ahead of the Paris Agreement.

As part of this pledge, Amazon gas has set aggressive goals, such as being 100% powered by renewable energy by 2025, including here in Ireland.

Amazon gas is making investments and innovating to help achieve these goals and today  are proud to announce a new 115-megawatt (MW) wind farm project in Ardderroo, Galway, which will begin operating in 2022, and will support Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centres in the country.

The new project in Ardderroo adds to Amazons’ existing projects in Esk, Co. Cork, which will come online in September 2020, and Meenbog, Co. Donegal, which will follow in early 2022.

In total, these three projects are projected to add 229 MW of renewable energy to the Irish grid each year, reducing carbon emissions by 366,000 tonnes of CO2 each year, and producing enough renewable energy to power 185,000 Irish homes, per annum.

To be powered by renewable energy in Ireland, they have committed to offtake 100% of the power from these projects without relying on public funding.

As a result, we were the first organisation in Ireland to sign unsubsidised Corporate Power Purchase Agreements (CPPAs).

Amazon started this with two existing wind projects, in Cork and Donegal, in 2019, and continue today with their third and largest CPPA to date with the new project in Galway.

These three Amazon renewable projects help Irish energy consumers avoid an estimated €229M Public Service Obligation (PSO) subsidy cost on their energy bills.

Once all projects are operational, they will be the largest single corporate buyer of renewable energy in the country.

They will be announcing more renewable projects as they 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.

Amazon gas: Committed to building a sustainable business in Ireland

They are not only investing in renewable energy to build a sustainable business in Ireland – but 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 centres, we use direct evaporative cooling systems, which predominately utilises outside air to cool our servers.

This means that for more than 95% of the year we use no water to cool our data centres in Ireland. For the few hot days, Ireland does see, we use a minimal amount of water to cool the air that removes heat from our servers.

Utilising this highly efficient cooling solution, our newest data centre designs use as little as 1,000m3 of water for cooling annually, per data centre – that is equivalent to the yearly water usage of just eight average Irish households.

For our new data centre, we are redesigning the roofs of our buildings in order to enable rainwater harvesting, to offset the water used from the local supply. Our goal is to be able to cool our data centres without taking any water from the local supply.

Amazon gas Greener in the cloud

As Amazon gas continues to reduce the environmental impact of our operations in Ireland, they are also supporting others to do the same. One way they are doing this is by providing the local community excess heat from our data centres.

At their data centres in Tallaght, South Dublin, they are supporting the county council as they establish 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 our local AWS data centre.

The scheme will initially heat 47,000 m2 of public sector buildings, 6000 m2 of commercial space, and affordable apartments.

Amazon is excited about this project and will look for opportunities to continue to support heat recycling and district heating schemes, where viable.

Customers in Ireland, and around the world, are also able to support their own goals to become sustainable by moving to the cloud.

In fact, the results of a recent study of US enterprise data centres by 451 research found AWS data centres to be 3.6 times more energy-efficient than the traditional alternative and achieved an 88% reduction in carbon footprint for workloads that moved from on-premises data centres to AWS, helping our customers to become greener in the cloud.

In addition, AWS customers utilise our services to make progress on their broader sustainability goals, from smart agriculture to optimising manufacturing processes.

Amazon gas has built a significant presence in Ireland and they are proud to contribute to Ireland’s strong international reputation as a global technology leader.

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