Leading the charge toward no carbon emissions, Amazon(AMZN, Financial) made a $500 million investment in nuclear power, causing a spike in nuclear shares, including Oklo (OKLO, Financial), NuScale Power (SMR, Financial), Nano Nuclear Energy (NNE, Financial), and Lightbridge (LTBR, Financial). This shift looks to shift the focus of the tech giants toward sustainability, a trend across the entire industry of sustainable energy.
On Wednesday, AWS added the signing of three critical deals to expand nuclear energy production, including building multiple SMRs. This program sweeps with Amazon’s Climate Pledge of achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2040. Among the above-listed agreements, special attention is paid to the cooperation agreement with Energy Northwest to build four innovative SMRs in Washington on land, initially producing 320 MW of electricity and increasing capacity to 960 MW.
To strengthen its nuclear ambition, Amazon collaborates with X-energy to deploy its atomic reactor designs in the Energy Northwest projects. This comprises increasing manufacturing capabilities for SMR equipment necessary to deliver five gigawatts of new nuclear projects.
Further, AWS and Dominion Energy of Virginia are keen to execute an SMR project near the North Anna nuclear power station to deliver at least 300MW to the region.
Specifically, the CEO of AWS, Matt Garman, pointed out that nuclear energy is one of the scalable and carbon-free sources that help companies fulfill their obligations and make the world carbon-free. While this incremental opening mounted by Amazon in itself throws added momentum into its plans and strategies, it also exercises a stunning impact on the collective efforts toward the promotion of greener energy solutions as a primary preference in the tech sphere.
This article first appeared on GuruFocus.