The Amazon smile box now comes with even more sunshine. Today we announced that we’ve begun hosting solar installations on the rooftops of our fulfillment and sortation centers with a goal of installing at least 50 solar systems by 2020.
By the end of this year, rooftop installations on Amazon fulfillment facilities across North America will generate up to 41 megawatts (MW) of power.
To give you an idea of what that looks like, check out the above video to see the impressive installation at the Patterson Amazon fulfillment center. Solar panels cover more than three-quarters of the 1.1 million square foot building’s rooftop.
And that’s just a small sampling of our overall renewable energy portfolio. Amazon’s recent renewable energy projects include the company’s largest wind farm to date, located in Texas. In addition, a network of wind and solar farms in Indiana, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia are delivering energy onto the electric grid that powers AWS data centers. To date, Amazon has announced or commenced construction on projects which will generate a total of 3.6 million MWh of renewable energy. Amazon was the leading corporate purchaser of renewable energy in the US in 2016, according to the 2017 GreenBiz State of Green Business report.
Additionally, we’ve also expanded our Career Choice offerings to include funding for associates to earn North American Board of Certified Energy Practitioners (NABCEP) certifications. According to the annual National Solar Jobs Census, one in 50 new jobs created in 2016 was in the solar industry across the country, which is a 25 percent increase from the previous year. Talk about high-demand! It would be a huge win for us to one day see former associates installing solar panels on the rooftop of our fulfillment centers.
We are really proud of all these efforts because it means we are putting our scale and inventive culture to work on sustainability—doing so is good for the environment and also for business, the industry and for customers. By diversifying our energy portfolio, we can keep business costs low and pass along further savings to customers. It’s a win-win-win.
That’s something to smile about.
For more information about Amazon’s solar deployment and our diverse energy portfolio as well as other initiatives we’ve taken on to protect the environment, visit www.aboutamazon.co.uk/sustainability.
