Iberdrola, one of the world’s largest clean energy companies, and Amazon have announced a new global collaboration to support the development of large-scale renewable energy projects and leverage cloud computing technology to enhance digitalisation in the energy transition.
Iberdrola and Amazon.com Inc. have agreed to collaborate on new wind and solar capacity by signing power purchase agreements (PPA) for projects in Europe, the U.S. and Asia-Pacific. The agreements will help Amazon stay on path to power its operations with 100% renewable energy by 2025 – five years ahead of its original 2030 commitment.
Two of Iberdrola’s offshore windfarms in Germany (Baltic Eagle and Windanker) will provide Amazon with 1.1 terawatt-hours (TWh) of clean energy each year, which is equivalent to the annual electricity needs of more than 314,000 European homes.
Baltic Eagle is located in the Baltic Sea, north of the island of Rügen and will have a total capacity of 476 megawatts (MW) when completed in 2024. Windanker, also located in the Baltic Sea, will have 300 MW of installed capacity and will be completed in 2026. The projects form part of Iberdrola’s Baltic Hub, which will have a total capacity of 1,100 MW, making it one of the largest offshore wind clusters in the region.
In addition to the agreement with Amazon for renewable energy, Iberdrola has selected Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) as its preferred cloud provider. AWS will support the energy company as it embarks on further digitalisation to support smarter grids, customer engagement, and connected clean power.
Aitor Moso, Director of Iberdrola’s Retail Business said: “The challenge of electrifying our energy system to increase our autonomy and reduce emissions requires partnerships between leaders like Iberdrola and Amazon. The agreement today, combining sun, wind, and cloud, will enable new renewable generation capacity around the world and accelerate the digital revolution in the energy sector. AWS technologies will support our digital strategy to continue increasing quality of supply and provide cleaner and fully-interconnected energy services for our customers.”
“Iberdrola and AWS believe that innovation is key to achieving our sustainability goals and accelerating the world’s energy transition,” said Matt Garman, Senior Vice President of Sales, Marketing, and Global Services at AWS. “AWS provides the reliability, scale, and cost-efficient IT infrastructure that will allow Iberdrola to optimize renewable energy production, modernize the power grid to integrate renewable energy sources, and enhance visibility across its operations. Together, we will advance the adoption of renewable energy and help Amazon stay on a path to power its operations with 100% renewable energy and reach net-zero carbon emissions.”
Through this collaboration Iberdrola will benefit from the recently launched AWS Europe (Spain) Region and AWS cloud services to drive the energy company’s ambitious digitalisation transformation plans. This includes collaborating on multiple sustainability-focused projects.
For example, the companies are developing an Advanced Smart Assistant application that will empower Iberdrola customers to take an active role in the energy transition. The application leverages services like AWS Lambda—a serverless, event-driven compute service for running code without provisioning or managing servers—and Amazon SageMaker—an AWS service that helps customers build, train, and deploy machine learning models—to facilitate the connectivity to devices like electric vehicle (EV) chargers and solar panels and controls them autonomously to reduce energy bills and carbon footprint.
Other projects include renewable energy production optimization and smart grid innovations like helping to develop the electricity substation of the future using Internet of Things (IoT) and digital twins.
Iberdrola is a global leader in renewables and smart grids, operating in Europe, the U.S, Asia Pacific and South America. The company has an installed capacity of around 40GW of renewable energy. As a pioneer in providing clean energy solutions to industrial partners, Iberdrola manages 23,000 GWh of PPA agreements across the world and works with companies across a wide range of sectors.
More broadly, In the last three years, Iberdrola has signed several long-term cross-sector alliances to promote the decarbonization of the economy:
• In January 2023, Iberdrola signed an alliance with Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, managed by Norges Bank Investment Management, to invest in 1,265 MW of new renewables capacity in Spain.
• In 2022 Iberdrola and bp reached an agreement to accelerate the deployment of EV charging infrastructure and the production of green hydrogen in Spain and Portugal.
• In addition, a few months ago. Iberdrola signed an alliance with Energy Infrastructure Partners to co-invest in the Wikinger offshore wind farm and strengthen its offshore wind portfolio.
• In 2021, Iberdrola also incorporated Mapfre as a partner in an agreement that includes, among other aspects, co-investment in a portfolio of wind assets of 295 MW.
• Before the pandemic, GIG joined Iberdrola in its East Anglia One offshore wind farm with a 40% project stake. Iberdrola retained a majority stake of 60%.
Between 2023 to 2025 Iberdrola will invest a record €47 billion globally to drive the energy transition forward. The company aims to install 52 GW of renewable energy capacity by 2025.
In addition, Iberdrola joined The Climate Pledge in January 2023. The Climate Pledge is a commitment to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2040—10 years ahead of the Paris Agreement. Amazon co-founded The Climate Pledge in 2019 to build a cross-sector community of companies, organizations, individuals, and partners working together to address the climate crisis and solve the challenges of decarbonizing our economy.
Iberdrola, Europe’s largest electricity utility by market capitalization and one of the world’s top three electricity companies, is a leader in renewables, spearheading the energy transition to a low carbon economy. The group supplies energy to almost 100 million people in dozens of countries. With a focus on renewable energy, smart networks and smart solutions for customers, Iberdrola’s main markets include Europe (Spain, the United Kingdom, Portugal, France, Germany, Italy and Greece), the United States, Brazil, Mexico and Australia. The company is also present in growth markets such as Japan, Taiwan, Ireland, Sweden and Poland, among others.
The company has a workforce of over 40,600 and assets in excess of €154.6.billion. In 2022, Iberdrola posted revenues of nearly €54 billion, net profit of €4.34 billion, with €7.5 billion paid in tax contributions in the countries where it operates. The company helps to support more than 400,000 jobs in communities across its supply chain, and global supplier purchases topped €17.8 billion in 2022. A benchmark in the fight against climate change, Iberdrola has invested more than €130 billion over the past two decades to help build a sustainable energy model, based on sound environmental, social and governance (ESG) principles.
