Engie, Amazon inaugurate Italy's biggest agrivoltaic farm

MILAN (Reuters) -France's Engie and Amazon on Friday officially opened Italy's biggest agrivoltaic farm to supply green energy to the Italian unit of the e-commerce giant.

The solar power farm, near the Sicilian city of Trapani, will create power through photovoltaic panels placed high above the ground in order to allow cultivation in the fields below.

Engie and Amazon have signed a corporate power purchase agreement under which the bulk of the energy created by the 66 megawatt (MW) plant will go to the e-commerce group, they said in a joint statement. The rest will go to the Italian power grid.

The two companies have also agreed to start producing green energy from another agrivoltaic farm in Sicily by the end of this year in order to reach a total installed capacity of 104 MW with the two plants.

The two facilities will help save more than 62,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions per year, according to Engie's estimates.

Amazon Italy plans to power all its activities with renewable energy by 2025.

The Italian subsidiary of Engie aims to reach 2 gigawatt (GW) of installed green capacity by 2030, its CEO Monica Iacono said in a statement.

(Reporting by Francesca Landini, editing Federico Maccioni and Louise Heavens)