Amazon powers AI growth with major clean energy push in Australia

Amazon.com Inc. will invest A$20 billion ($13 billion) in Australia between 2025 and 2029 to expand its data center infrastructure, which Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called the largest-ever tech investment in the country by a global firm.

The prime Minister welcomed Amazon Web Services’ investment to expand data center infrastructure in Sydney and Melbourne, calling it the largest-ever tech investment in the country by a global provider. He emphasized the project’s role in strengthening Australia’s AI capabilities, creating skilled jobs, and supporting high-performance computing infrastructure.

The funds will boost cloud computing capacity and support Australia’s growing demand for artificial intelligence, Amazon said in a statement. The investment will center around its existing Sydney and Melbourne data centers.

Albanese met with Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman on Saturday in Seattle ahead of the G-7 summit in Canada, where the deal was highlighted as a milestone in digital cooperation.

Garman highlighted the company’s commitment to helping Australian organizations leverage generative AI. He said the investment will strengthen data infrastructure, increase renewable energy use, and support Australia’s ambition to become a global AI leader.

Industry and Innovation Minister Tim Ayres welcomed the investment in an interview with Sky News Australia, calling it a “very significant” step for the nation’s digital infrastructure.

“It’s in Australia’s interests to lean into the opportunity,” Ayres said. “We must be makers of the technology as well as takers.”

Amazon powers AI growth with major clean energy push in Australia

As part of the expansion, Amazon will also build three new solar farms in Victoria and Queensland to power the growing infrastructure and support its clean energy goals. Amazon will commit to buying a combined capacity of more than 170 megawatts across these farms.

Amazon operates eight solar and wind energy projects across New South Wales, Queensland, and Victoria, which help power its Australian data centers and fulfillment facilities. Once all 11 of its planned renewable energy projects are online, they are expected to produce over 1.4 million megawatt-hours of clean energy annually—enough to power approximately 290,000 Australian homes each year.

Between 2020 and 2022, Amazon invested an estimated A$467 million in renewable energy projects in Australia. In 2024, Amazon was Australia’s third-largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy and remains the largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy globally. 

As per a study by Accenture, Australian organizations migrating compute-heavy AI workloads to AWS can reduce carbon emissions by up to 94% compared with on-premises data centers. This is because of AWS’s infrastructure hardware, power, cooling, and carbon-free energy procurement efficiencies.

AWS powers Australia’s AI ambitions with expanding cloud footprint

The investment aligns with the Australian government’s goal to boost productivity and economic growth through AI-driven innovation. 

It will equip hundreds of thousands of Amazon Web Services (AWS) customers and partners with advanced cloud and AI tools, enabling large-scale innovation while ensuring compliance with local data residency and regulatory standards. The Department of Industry, Science and Resources estimates that AI and automation could add up to A$600 billion to Australia’s GDP annually by 2030.

AWS’s presence in Australia began in 2012 with the opening of the AWS Asia Pacific (Sydney) Region. This was followed by the opening of the AWS Asia Pacific in 2023, including the country’s first AWS Local Zones in Perth. 

In April 2024, AWS established Amazon Bedrock, AWS’s fully managed generative AI service, in the AWS Asia Pacific (Sydney) Region. Moreover, in July 2024, the Australian Government linked with AWS to provide a “Top Secret” AWS Cloud to deliver cloud innovation in national security and defense and enhance the nation’s defense and intelligence capabilities.

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