Why it matters to you
With energy demands on the increase, wind farms like this can help take care of some of this need.
He founded ecommerce giant Amazon and the ambitious space company Blue Origin, and now owns the Washington Post, so if Jeff Bezos wants to bless his new wind farm by standing atop a turbine and smashing a bottle of champagne on it, that’s fine by us.
Fun day christening Amazon’s latest wind farm. #RenewableEnergy pic.twitter.com/cTxeXdsFop
— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) October 19, 2017
The wind farm in question is in Texas and is, according to Amazon, the company’s largest renewable energy project to date. Bezos posted a video of his bottle-smashing exploits on Twitter. The footage begins close up to the Amazon CEO before moving away to reveal the vast expanse of the wind farm. It also makes you realize just how mind-bogglingly massive one of those wind turbines actually is, or just how tiny Jeff Bezos is. We’re guessing the former.
Located in Scurry Country, Amazon’s latest wind farm includes 100 turbines capable of providing enough clean energy to power 330,000 homes. The company said these projects also help to support “hundreds of jobs and provide tens of millions of dollars of investment in local communities across the country.”
Kara Hurst, Amazon’s worldwide director of sustainability, described the company’s investment in renewable energy as a “win-win-win-win — it’s right for our customers, our communities, our business, and our planet.”
The company has so far launched 18 wind and solar projects across the U.S., with 35 more under development. “These are important steps toward reaching our long-term goal to power our global infrastructure using 100 percent renewable energy,” Hurst said.
Alongside its investment in renewable energy, Amazon is also focusing on sustainability, evidenced by its Frustration-Free Packaging program that helped to eliminate more than 55,000 tons of packaging in 2016.
Amazon’s announcement of its latest wind farm comes just a few days after Greenpeace criticized it for being “one of the least transparent companies in the world in terms of its environmental performance,” claiming it refuses to report its greenhouse gas footprint, “nor does it publish any restrictions on hazardous chemicals in its devices or being used in its supply chain as other leading electronics brands provide.”
Even if Greenpeace is unimpressed by Bezos’s smashing video, hopefully it’ll at least welcome this latest renewable energy effort from the company.
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