Amazon to Build 900 Acre Solar Farm in Virginia

 The 80-megawatt facility to be built for Amazon Web Services would generate enough electricity to power 15,000 homes.

“We are now in the game. We weren’t in the past even suited up. We didn’t even have our uniform on,” McAuliffe said during a Monday morning plane ride from Richmond to Accomack, where he signed the permit allowing the Amazon solar farm to move forward. “I think we’re sending the signal that Virginia is open and welcoming to renewables and this is a good place to do business.”

In the second quarter of this year, Virginia ranked eighth in the country in clean energy-related job announcements with 400. But the jobs related to installing solar panels or wind turbines are only a piece of the puzzle, McAuliffe said. Such tech companies as Amazon and Netflix, which have committed to using only clean energy power sources, will not consider building in states that are not friendly to renewable energy.

McAuliffe said he met with four solar manufacturing companies during a recent West Coast trip and is in serious negotiations with a pair of them to build plants in Virginia. Those jobs would help replace ones lost in the tobacco, furniture, textile and coal industries, he said.

Read the full article from The Roanoke Times.