Amazon to buy energy from Backbone Solar Farm

The solar farm project, which will be built on the former site of a 120-year-old Vindex/Arch Coal mining site, is a $200 million investment from CPV in a brownfield. This project is expected to create 200 jobs and will be the largest solar farm in the state.

“This is a true win for the whole community,” said Garrett County Commissioner Paul Edwards. “Our team worked collaboratively with CPV to pull this pilot project together. The innovation and relationships built right here in Garrett County will now have positive implications both at home and across the country for the foreseeable future.”

Amazon is expected to use the new facility to power its Amazon Web Services data centers, along with its fulfillment centers and physical stores. It is also one of 78 new solar and wind projects Amazon has announced investments in so far in 2023.

“This is only the beginning of that project,” said Garrett County Government Business Development Specialist Connor Norman. “It’ll likely supply even more of Amazon’s infrastructure. This will create a steady revenue stream that will benefit Garrett County for the next 20 years.”

It has been a long road to getting this project truly off the ground, but the wheels seem to be turning in the optimistic direction. Back in late July during the Garrett County Commissioners’ “State of the County” meeting at the Garrett Chamber of Commerce’s Business Before Hours, Commissioner Larry Tichnell gave a specific shout-out to this project’s potential in the event it was able to become active.

The solar farm was initially approved by the Maryland Public Service Commission back on Jan. 11, 2022, when it granted CPV a Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity.

“We’re building this project and making use of land that would otherwise be unusable,” said Sean Finnerty, executive vice president of Renewable Energy for CPV to CNBC’s Olick. “...We made a conscious decision to develop the Backbone project on the former coal mine. It brings a positive benefit to the community, but the permitting was very rigorous with the state of Maryland. There was a lot of effort that went into making sure the solar farm was designed correctly.”

The site was deemed attractive for a project like this due to it already having access to an energy interconnection as well as substations.

“They don’t get plugged into a data center or an Amazon fulfillment center or a home. They get plugged into a substation and into the grid, so we’re making the grid cleaner,” said Nat Sahlstrom, head of energy, water and sustainability for AWS, to Olick. “Our investments are helping power our operations and making the entire grid greener.”

Salstrom also added that Amazon is currently on track to power all its operations with renewable energy by 2025, sooner than the earlier pledge of 2030. Amazon said that this is the company’s first brownfield solar project, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that there are more than 450,000 brownfield sites in the country.

A “brownfield” is defined as a property that has been previously used for industrial or commercial purposes and may contain hazardous substances, pollutants, etc., which can complicate expansion or redevelopment (the toxins here have been cleaned out). From the definition by the EPA: “The cleanup and reusing of brownfields can increase local tax bases, facilitate job growth, utilize existing infrastructure, take development pressures off of undeveloped, open land and both improve and protect the environment.”

This project is expected to be completed late next year (tentative dates).