INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Facebook has signed a deal to buy renewable energy in India from a local firm's wind power project, the social media giant's first such deal
in the country, the companies said on Thursday.The 32 megawatt wind power project, located in Karnataka, is part of a larger portfolio of
wind and solar projects that Facebook and Mumbai-based CleanMax are working together on for supplying renewable power into India's
electrical grid, they said in a joint statement.CleanMax will own and operate the projects, while Facebook will buy the power off the grid
using environmental attribute certificates, or carbon credits, the companies said.Facebook's head of renewable energy, Urvi Parekh, told
Reuters the company typically doesn't own the power plants but instead signs "long-term" electricity purchasing agreements with the
renewable power company."That enables the project to seek out the financing that it would need," she said.India is Facebook's biggest market
by users.In Singapore, Facebook has announced similar partnerships with energy providers Sunseap Group, Terrenus Energy and Sembcorp
Industries on projects that can produce 160 MW of solar power, Parekh said.The electricity generated from these plants will power the tech
giant's first Asian data centre that is set to start operations next year, she added.Data centres driving tech companies like Facebook use
up as much as 1% of the world's total energy, the International Energy Agency said last year.Tech companies like Amazon, Alphabet Inc and
Microsoft have pledged to operate carbon-free and achieve net-zero emissions, as demand for data and digital services is expected to see a
sustained rise.Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced separately on Thursday that the company's global operations are now supported wholly
by renewable energy and that it has reached net-zero emissions.
