AES Corporation nails down another Microsoft renewable energy agreement

The Arlington, Va.-based AES Corporation, a Fortune 500 electrical power company, has inked another multi-year renewable energy agreement with Microsoft Corp.

“Microsoft continues to be a leader in the clean energy transition,” said AES President and CEO Andrés Gluski. “Working in tandem with Microsoft, we co-created a scalable 24/7 carbon-free solution to power its data centers in Virginia, and we are now proud to move forward on another innovative renewable energy supply structure in California.”

AES on May 4 announced the 20-year agreement to provide renewable energy to the tech giant’s data centers in California where it will source the energy from a portfolio of 110 megawatt (MW) AC solar and 55 MW, four-hour storage projects in the state’s Independent System Operator region.

“AES’s presence and critical capabilities in California will support our transition to 100-percent renewable energy by 2025 and enable us to move forward in having 100 percent of our electricity matched by zero-carbon resources all the time in the state,” Brian Janous, Microsoft’s general manager of energy and renewables, said in a statement. 

The new AES-Microsoft agreement expands upon prior renewable energy agreements made between the two companies, the most recent being the 15-year agreement AES signed in November 2021 to power Microsoft’s Virginia-based data centers. 

“We’ve looked to AES as a partner in PJM and now California based on its ability to create innovative commercial structures that meet our needs,” said Janous.

During 2021, AES signed almost 5 gigawatts (GW) of new power purchase agreements (PPAs) globally. In fact, AES sold more clean energy to corporations than any other developer globally, at just under 3 GW, with two-thirds of that activity taking place in the United States, as well as in other markets, like Brazil, Panama and Chile, according to BloombergNEF’s January PPA report.