Amazon ploughs $17bn into renewable energy-powered Spanish data centres
New deals signed by tech giant will take its clean power capacity in wind and solar-rich Spain to almost 3GW
Amazon’s cloud computing unit is investing €15.7bn ($17bn) in green-powered data centres in Spain, as the tech giant signs deals for a dozen new wind and solar projects across the country.
Amazon Web Services today announced plans to expand its cloud infrastructure in Aragón, a landlocked region in Spain’s northeast.
“We will match the electricity used in our data centres in Aragón with 100% renewable sources,” said Suzana Curic, head of AWS in Spain and Portugal.
That goal will be boosted by the tech giant’s signing of power purchase agreements to secure energy from 12 renewables projects that will be built across Spain with a combined capacity of 596MW.
That takes its total green power capacity in the country to almost 3GW.
Those new projects will consist of four wind farms and eight solar farms, distributed across the country.
Amazon is aiming to match 100% of its global electricity use with green energy by next year, a target that was moved forward from 2030. It has also pledged to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2040.
AWS said that its existing data centres in Aragón have been matching electricity used with 100% renewable energy since 2022.
Amazon reports it now has more than 500 wind and solar projects globally. Once operational, they are expected to generate more than 77TWh of clean energy each year.
Spain has eyed the economic opportunity of the AI boom and the data centres that will be needed to meet it, setting out a national AI strategy this month.
Spain’s Minister for Digital Transformation, José Luis Escrivá, said the fact that the AWS data centres are “100% powered with renewable energy is absolutely aligned with the AI Government Strategy.”
The report said that the growth of data centres in Europe could be highly concentrated in countries with cheap, abundant power from renewables and nuclear, singling out Spain, France and the Nordics as prime examples, as well as other countries like the UK and Germany that are prepared to pay subsidies.