The minute
- Amazon signed a power purchase agreement (PPA) with Statkraft for the 36 MW Mossy Hill wind farm near Lerwick, in Scotland’s Shetland Islands. The project is expected to start operating in November 2030.
- Amazon reports more than 50 carbon-free projects in the UK: nine wind and solar farms built away from its own sites, plus 41 solar arrays installed on its buildings. Together they pass 1 GW once all are running. The company also reports more than £3 billion (about US$3.9 billion) invested in low-carbon technologies there from 2021 to 2025.
- Amazon’s 2025 sustainability report says it matched 100% of its electricity with renewable energy, while its absolute emissions rose 16% from 2024. Carbon intensity fell 38% from the 2019 baseline, and revenue grew 156% over the same period.
Why it matters: A PPA with a start date five years away does two jobs. It gives a developer a contracted revenue stream that can support financing. It also gives the buyer a claim on future clean electricity. The Amazon figures, as reported by CarbonCredits.com, show that the second job does not deliver the outcome most readers assume. A company can report 100% renewable electricity and still emit more in absolute terms, and Amazon just did.
Matching consumption is an accounting result, not a physical one
Amazon says it reached its 100% renewable electricity goal in 2025, five years ahead of its 2030 target. In the same report, absolute emissions rose 16% from 2024. Both statements can be true because electricity is only one part of the footprint.
Delivery vehicles, buildings, packaging and the supply chain sit outside the electricity match, and they grow with the business. Amazon reports carbon intensity down 38% since 2019, but intensity falls whenever revenue grows faster than emissions, and revenue is reported up 156%. I read the intensity number as a statement about sales growth first and about decarbonization second.
The Mossy Hill contract is also a promise about the future. The turbines are expected online in November 2030, so the contract removes no emissions today. What it does, according to Amazon, is act as an anchor offtake that helps a project get built.
Whether that adds new generation or only reassigns existing clean power to one buyer depends on whether the project would have been financed without the PPA. The source does not answer that. Amazon’s own description (“helped projects reach deployment”) is a company claim, not an independent finding, and it should be read that way.
Still undecided: whether Amazon’s absolute emissions start to fall before its 2040 net-zero target, and how much of the 2030 electric delivery goal (100,000 vehicles, against more than 52,700 vans in operation today per the company) closes the gap. What would settle it is a year in which the company reports a drop in absolute emissions, not only in intensity.
The Brazilian counterpart
Brazil has no direct equivalent of a UK wind PPA with a global buyer, but it has a similar mechanism. In the free contracting environment (ACL), eligible consumers buy electricity directly from generators under bilateral contracts. ANEEL oversees the market and CCEE handles settlement. Buyers who want an environmental claim usually add renewable energy certificates such as I-REC.
The structural difference is that the Brazilian grid already has a large share of hydro, so a market-based claim there often says less about additionality than a contract that finances a new turbine does.
On the numbers: this article has no Brazilian figure for corporate renewable PPA volume or for average Scope 2 emissions of free-market consumers, and we are not estimating one. That data would have to come from CCEE or from company inventories under the Brazilian GHG Protocol Program. Brazil’s regulated carbon market (SBCE) is also still being built out. There is no settled rule yet on how a company’s absolute emissions would be capped or reported against such contracts.
Who gains and who loses
Developers and their lenders gain, because a long contract from a creditworthy buyer lowers financing risk. Large buyers gain a price hedge and a public claim. Smaller buyers can lose ground if the best sites and the strongest developers are already committed to anchor buyers of this size, a point the source does not quantify. Investors and customers who read the 100% figure as a decarbonization result lose clarity when absolute emissions are not reported next to it.
What it means for Brazilian companies
Brazilian exporters and subsidiaries of multinationals will be asked for the same two numbers: electricity matched and absolute emissions. Report both side by side.
A buyer entering the free market should write into the contract the generation source, the start date and the certificate that will back the claim, because a start date years out (as at Mossy Hill) leaves the claim empty until the plant runs.
Project developers can use Amazon’s structure as a template: long tenor, a named anchor buyer and a clear commissioning date are what lenders look at. And treat intensity metrics with care in any disclosure. If revenue grows quickly, intensity improves even when total emissions rise, and a reader who sees only one of the two can be misled.
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