The trendy thing for tech companies to do these days? Go green, and in a big way. Just one day after Google announced its own commitment to zero-waste data centers, Amazon is unveiling its own eco-friendly initiative. And this one comes in the form of a truly giant wind farm. Dubbed “Amazon Wind Farm Texas,” this new 253-megawatt wind farm will soon take shape in Scurry County, Texas. It’s slated to generate a whopping 1 million megawatt hours of wind energy every year, which is enough to provide power to some 90,000 American homes.
The ambitious project, which will boast more than 100 turbines, is currently on track to open in late 2017. It’s the online retailer’s biggest renewable energy project yet, and the turbines it contains are pretty sizable too — in fact, each turbine’s rotor diameter is twice as long as a Boeing 747’s wingspan. With the addition of this Texas location, Amazon will have renewable energy farms (both wind and solar) in five states, with the others including Indiana, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia. Together, these five sites should produce more than 2.6 million megawatt hours of renewable energy annually. And that is sufficient to power almost a quarter of a million U.S. homes.
“We’re excited to work with the community in Scurry County and Lincoln Clean Energy to generate 1 million megawatt hours of renewable energy each year from West Texas,” said Kara Hurst, director of sustainability, Amazon. “Amazon Wind Farm Texas is our largest renewable energy project to date and the newest milestone in our long-term sustainability efforts across the company.”
Declan Flanagan, Lincoln Clean Energy’s founder and CEO, echoed these sentiments, noting, “We applaud Amazon’s leadership in directly purchasing renewable power. Direct purchasing by large, long-term thinking customers like Amazon has quickly become a key driver of the transition to renewable power across the U.S.”
Soon, along with Chicago, Scurry County, Texas, can be called the windy city.
