Amazon to Invest in 18 New Renewable Energy Projects

Shares of Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) were trading 1.2% up, at the time of writing, in the early trading session on Wednesday after the company announced plans to invest in 18 new wind and solar energy projects in Europe and the U.S.

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The technology firm is based out of Seattle and offers E-commerce, cloud computing, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence services.

Details of the Projects

The 18 wind and solar energy projects will be spread across the U.S., Finland, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the U.K., and will boast of a procured capacity of 5.6 gigawatts (GW) so far this year.

These 18 projects will take the company’s total number of renewable energy projects across the globe to 274. They will also help Amazon power all its business operations with renewable energy by 2025, five years earlier than its original target of 2030.

Once these projects become completely operational, they will take AMZN’s total committed renewable electricity production capacity to more than 12 GW and 33,700 gigawatt hours (GWh), which is equivalent to powering more than 3 million U.S. homes for one year.

Furthermore, the amount of renewable energy generated by these 18 projects will help in avoiding about 13.7 million metric tons of carbon emissions per year. (See Insiders’ Hot Stocks on TipRanks)

The power generated by these projects will be supplied to Amazon’s corporate offices, fulfillment centers, and Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centers.

Comments

The Vice-President of Worldwide Sustainability at Amazon, Kara Hurst, said, “Significant investments in renewable energy globally are an important step in delivering on The Climate Pledge, our commitment to reach net-zero carbon by 2040, 10 years ahead of the Paris Agreement.”

The CEO of Clean Energy Buyers Association (CEBA), Miranda Ballentine, said, “For the second year in a row, Amazon has set new records as it works toward fully powering its operations with renewable energy by 2025, five years ahead of schedule. Large-scale clean energy investments like these benefit us all and should be the new normal for industries of all shapes and sizes.”

The Impact Director at RE-Source, Hannah Hunt, said, “The company’s 10 new renewable energy operations across Europe will benefit communities, bring new green jobs, and help meet our commitments to curb the climate crisis.”

Wall Street’s Take

On November 30, Morgan Stanley (MS) analyst Brian Nowak reiterated a Buy rating on the stock with a price target of $4,000 (14.1% upside potential).

Following the company’s announcement that it expects to be the largest package delivery carrier in the U.S. latest by early 2022, the analyst said, “Many investors and industry observers believed that this was potentially years away but with Amazon Logistics soon likely to be the largest player in the U.S. (with more growth to come), it should have enough capacity to start moving 3P boxes if Amazon so chooses.”

Overall, the stock has a Strong Buy consensus rating based on 31 unanimous Buys. The average Amazon.com price target of $4,095 implies 16.8% upside potential. Shares have gained 10.1% year-to-date.

Website Traffic

TipRanks’ Website Traffic Tool, which uses data from SEMrush Holdings (SEMR), the world’s biggest website usage monitoring service, offers insight into Amazon’s performance.

According to the tool, compared to the previous year, the company’s website traffic registered a 30.6% decrease in global visits in October. Moreover, the website traffic has declined 2.4% year-to-date against the same period last year.