Facebook signs deal to buy renewable energy in India

• Reuters, SINGAPORE

Facebook Inc has signed a deal to buy renewable energy in India from a local firm’s wind power project, the social media giant’s first such deal in the South Asian nation, the companies said yesterday.

The 32 megawatt (MW) wind power project, located in southern Karnataka state, is part of a larger portfolio of wind and solar projects that Facebook and Mumbai-based CleanMax are working together on for supplying renewable power to India’s electrical grid, they said in a joint statement.

CleanMax would own and operate the projects, while Facebook would buy the power off the grid using environmental attribute certificates, the firms said.

Facebook renewable energy head Urvi Parekh said that the company typically does not own the power plants, but instead signs “long-term” electricity purchasing agreements with the renewable power company.

“That enables the project to seek out the financing that it would need,” she said.

India is Facebook’s biggest market by users.

In Singapore, Facebook has announced similar partnerships with energy providers Sunseap Group Pte, Terrenus Energy Pte Ltd and Sembcorp Industries Ltd on projects that can produce 160MW of solar power, Parekh said.

The power generated by these plants would power Facebook’s first Asian data center that is set to start operations next year, she said.

Data centers driving tech firms such as Facebook use up as much as 1 percent of the world’s energy, the International Energy Agency said last year.

Tech firms such as Amazon.com Inc, Alphabet Inc and Microsoft Corp have pledged to operate carbon-free and achieve net-zero emissions, as demand for digital services is expected to rise.

Separately yesterday, Facebook chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company’s global operations are now supported wholly by renewable energy and that it has reached net-zero emissions.