E-commerce giant Amazon is to support the development of 62MW of solar in Singapore by procuring power generated from a network of ‘moveable’ installs.
The installations, which are being developed by local clean energy company Sunseap Group, are expected to come online in 2022.
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The solar capacity is to be developed across vacant land in Singapore. Installs will be moved to different locations as land is reclaimed, making the development among the largest ‘moveable’ solar arrays in the country, Amazon said.
Amazon will use the ~80,000MWh produced from the installs each year to power its offices, data centres and fulfilment facilities in Singapore.
It is Amazon’s first renewables venture in Singapore and its fifth in the Asia Pacific region, after pledging to spend around US$2 billion to help develop 3.4GW of solar and wind energy capacity last June. The company already has a global renewable energy capacity of 6.5GW, and is hoping to run on 100% renewables by 2025.
Amazon Web Services’ Asean managing director Conor McNamara said on Sunday (14 March) that the installation would support Singapore’s own Green Plan 2030, which was unveiled last October and includes a target of quadrupling the country’s solar energy deployment by 2025.
“Utility-scale solar energy projects,” such as Amazon and Sunseap’s, he said, “align with the Green Plan’s key pillar of using cleaner energy and help Amazon meet its commitment to power our operations with 100% renewable energy by 2030, a goal we are on a path to meet five years early by 2025.”
Sunseap is also exploring the possibility of overseas solar imports in order to decarbonise the city state’s grid. The developer formed a joint venture with utility Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB) earlier this month to participate in a tender that will trial importing 100MW of clean electricity from Malaysia to Singapore.