Tech giant Microsoft has signed renewable energy agreements in Asia with RenNew Power in India and EDP Renewables in Singapore, totalling 637.6MW.
RenNew Power, an Indian independent power producer (IPP), revealed yesterday that it had signed “one of the largest corporate renewable energy agreements” in India after confirming that it had signed a green attributable sale contract of 437.6MW with Microsoft.
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Although not specifically oriented to solar PV, the deal will see Microsoft supplied with renewable energy from ReNew’s contracted portfolio, which boasts 15.6GW across technologies such as wind generation.
Indeed, it should be noted that ReNew has contributed approximately 10% of India’s total solar and wind energy generation this financial year. By 2029, it hopes to have a renewable energy asset portfolio of over 21GW.
The company has been active in signing PPAs in recent months. In May 2024, PV Tech reported it had signed 800MW worth of agreements across three separate deals.
As per the agreement with Microsoft, ReNew will allocate around US$15 million of revenue from the contract to a community fund. This fund will support environmental justice initiatives, with a focus on women’s livelihoods and economic empowerment, energy access, rural electrification, environmental remediation, water quality improvement, and other issues affecting communities that are disproportionately affected by pollution and climate change.
Puneet Chandok, president of Microsoft India and South Asia, referenced the community fund, stating that it will benefit local initiatives such as rural electrification.
“Microsoft has ambitious renewable energy and decarbonisation goals. This agreement with ReNew accelerates our progress towards these goals while benefiting local communities through initiatives such as rural electrification and initiatives to improve women’s livelihoods. We are taking a holistic approach that includes progressing our climate goals and empowering the ecosystem with the technology that is needed to build a more resilient future,” Chandok said.
Supply agreement signed for Singapore’s ‘largest’ solar PV project
In Singapore, Microsoft has signed an agreement with Spanish clean energy developer EDP Renewables that will see the tech giant secure 100% of the renewable energy exported to the grid from the SolarNova 8 project, comprising up to 200MWp of capacity.
Dubbed Singapore’s “largest solar project”, SolarNova 8 will see more than 320,000 PV modules across various buildings, including 1,075 public housing facilities and 101 government buildings.
Rooftop solar is particularly interesting in Singapore, considering that most of the city-state is given to urban development. This has prevented the installation of large utility-scale solar farms, which take up much land. Instead, rooftop solar PV and connections with other markets, such as the Australia-Asia PowerLink, have been paramount to Singapore’s decarbonisation ambitions.
Adrian Anderson, general manager of renewables and carbon-free energy at Microsoft, said the deal builds on Microsoft’s global relationship with EDP and will help the companies drive grid decarbonisation efforts in the US, Singapore, and Europe.
“Building our renewable energy portfolio with EDPR ensures that we can continue to secure renewable energy supply to meet our Microsoft’s ambitious renewable energy and decarbonisation goals,” Anderson added.
