Facebook has announced that it has signed a deal with Mumbai-based CleanMax to purchase renewable energy in India from the latter’s wind power project. This is the social media giant's first such deal in the South Asian nation.
The 32 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 into India's electrical grid, they said in a joint declaration.
CleanMax will own and operate the projects, while Facebook will purchase the power off the grid using environmental attribute certificates, or carbon credits, the companies said.
Facebook's head of renewable energy, Urvi Parekh, said the company normally doesn't own the power plants but instead signs "long-term" electricity purchasing agreements with the renewable power company.
"That facilitates the project to seek out the financing that it would need," she said.
In Singapore, Facebook has announced similar partnerships with energy providers Sunseap Group, Terrenus Energy, and Sembcorp Industries on projects that can produce 160 MW of solar power, Parekh said.
The electricity generated from these plants will power the tech giant's first Asian data centre that is set to start operations next year, she added.
Data centres driving tech companies like Facebook use up as much as 1 percent of the world's total energy, the International Energy Agency said last year.
Tech companies like Amazon, Alphabet Inc, and Microsoft have vowed to operate carbon-free and achieve net-zero emissions, as demand for data and digital services is expected to see a sustained rise.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company's global operations are now reinforced wholly by renewable energy and that it has reached net-zero emissions.