Japan's Itochu Signs Deals to Supply Renewable Energy to Amazon, Meta
February 15 2023 - 2:41AM
Dow Jones News
By Fabiana Negrin Ochoa
Japanese trading company Itochu Corp. has signed agreements to
supply U.S. tech giants Amazon.com Inc. and Meta Platforms Inc.
with renewable energy.
Itochu on Wednesday said its portfolio company, Clean Energy
Connect Ltd., has signed a deal to develop solar-power plants at
700 locations to provide Amazon with renewable energy in Japan.
Under the power-purchase agreement, CEC, which develops and
operates multiple small- and medium-sized solar plants, will supply
Amazon with 108 megawatts of power by 2024, according to the
statement.
Itochu said there is increasing momentum in Japan to rely less
on the country's feed-in-tariff program and introduce renewable
power supply "such as by newly building a power plant exclusively
for use by a company."
Amazon--the world's largest corporate buyer of renewable
energy--has said it is on track to use only renewable power sources
by 2025.
Itochu, which is involved in trading products including
textiles, machinery and metals, said in a separate statement
Wednesday that it will supply Meta with energy from a wind-power
plant in Texas under a long-term power-purchase agreement.
The Facebook parent reached its 100% renewable-energy target
across global operations in 2020, and had contracts in place for
more than 9,000MW of solar and wind energy as of end-2022, up from
7,500MW as of end-2021.
The energy supplied to Meta will be come from a wind-power plant
near Houston that Itochu is investing in via a special purpose
entity together with investment firm Fengate Asset Management and
GE Energy Financial Services, a business unit of GE. The plant, due
to start operating by the end of the year once construction is
completed, has a total generating capacity of 160MW.
Two of Itochu's U.S.-based subsidiaries, Tyr Energy and NAES
Corp., will jointly manage power sales in Texas, it said in the
statement.
The move is the Japanese company's latest expansion into
renewables in the U.S. Itochu has invested in six wind-power
projects via Kansas-based Tyr, as well as over 30 power plants, and
is developing renewable projects with a combined generating
capacity of approximately 2GW. It said it aims to expand its
renewables footprint in North America "by leveraging the capability
of NAES...the largest independent power-plant operation and
maintenance service company in the world."
Write to Fabiana Negrin Ochoa at fabiana.negrinochoa@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
February 15, 2023 02:26 ET (07:26 GMT)
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