Amazon-funded wind farm now operational in Scotland

An Amazon-funded wind farm is now operational in Scotland, ScottishPower announced Thursday.

The company said this will be its largest wind farm without a government support scheme. It entered into a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) with Amazon for the farm, meaning ScottishPower will sell Amazon energy power for a certain period of time at a certain price. 

In this case, Amazon will purchase all of the power output from the wind farm. The energy will power Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centers, corporate offices, and fulfillment centers.

According to announcements, this is Amazon’s first operational renewable energy deal in the United Kingdom.

“Amazon is on a path to powering our operations with 100% renewable energy by 2025, five years ahead of schedule. We are excited that our first Scottish windfarm is now contributing to that goal, and we have three more large-scale renewable projects in development across the UK,” John Boumphrey, Amazon’s UK Country Manager, said.

“Investing in clean energy and working across all of our operations to become more efficient is just one of the many actions we are taking to reach our commitment as part of The Climate Pledge to be net-zero carbon by 2040,” he added.

The Beinn an Tuirc 3 wind farm has 14 turbines on the Kintyre peninsula. It produces enough clean energy to power almost 46,000 homes. 

“It’s really exciting to mark the completion of Beinn an Tuirc 3 and the start of our PPA with Amazon during UK Wind Week and with just a few days to go until the COP26 UN Climate Change Conference gets underway,” Lindsay McQuade, CEO of ScottishPower Renewables, said