Microsoft has agreed to buy all the renewable energy output from a 60 megawatt (MW) solar project in its first clean energy deal in Asia.
The tech giant's agreement with Sunseap Group — Singapore's largest clean energy solutions provider — will last for 20 years.
"With the agreement, Microsoft will improve the sustainability of our local operations and make important progress toward our corporate sustainability goals for datacentres," Kevin Wo, Microsoft Singapore's managing director, said in a statement Thursday.
The solar project will, according to Microsoft, be spread out across hundreds of rooftops around Singapore and will be the largest rooftop solar project there to date.
In October 2017, Microsoft and General Electric (GE) entered into a 15-year power purchase agreement in Ireland. That deal means that Microsoft will purchase all the wind energy produced at GE's new, 37 MW Tullahennel wind farm in County Kerry. In November, state-owned Swedish energy company Vattenfall signed a 10-year deal to power Microsoft's international data center operations in the Netherlands using wind power.
"We're on track to exceed our goal of powering 50 percent of our global datacentre load with renewable energy this year," Christian Belady, Microsoft's general manager for cloud infrastructure strategy and architecture, said.
"Once operational, the new solar project will bring Microsoft's total global direct procurement in renewable energy projects to 860 megawatts."
