Opinion: The aborted construction of Amazon’s west Auckland data centre shows just how much has changed in its much-vaunted expansion plans in four years.
Amazon Web Services boss Adam Selipsky wrote to Jacinda Ardern, the prime minister of the day, to congratulate her on her “strong leadership” through Covid and advise that the company intended to invest $7.5 billion in building new cloud computing infrastructure in New Zealand, using the country’s abundant renewable power.
“When we factor in the carbon intensity of consumed electricity and renewable energy purchases, which reduce associated carbon emissions,” he wrote, “AWS performs the same task with an 88 percent lower carbon footprint.”
That was when the spot price of electricity was less than $100/MWh.