Oil supermajor BP deepened its renewable energy footprint by announcing power deals with web giant Amazon and a further investment to take a half-share in the BP Lightsource development joint venture.
The Amazon agreement ramps up BP’s portfolio of corporate renewable power purchase agreements (PPAs) by facilitating deals between the online retail group and 170MW of planned wind and solar projects in Sweden and Spain, the former from the Västernorrland project that enters service in 2022.
BP said the deals are the first tranche of what is expected to swell to more than 400MW.
Like fossil fuel peers such as Shell, BP sees its established energy trading business as a means to grab a piece of the energy transition action as companies seek to procure more clean power to meet climate goals.
“One way BP can play an important role in helping our customers is by using our trading capability and scale to deliver innovative, reliable and flexible supplies of low-carbon and renewable power to major corporate customers and partners,” it said.
Amazon – which announced the addition to its global clean power portfolio earlier this week – is one of the biggest corporate offtakers of renewables to green its Amazon Web Services data centre network.
In a separate announcement BP said it will boost its share of the BP Lightsource solar development joint venture to 50%, creating what it said would be a simplified structure.
The oil group said the funds to purchase the additional 7% stake – for an undisclosed sum – will be available for investment by the developer, which has a pipeline of 12GW globally.
BP first took a 43% stake in Lightsource in 2017.
