Dive Brief:

• Amazon announced it will build a new wind farm in North Carolina to support its cloud data centers.

• The new wind farm is expected to be up and running by the end of 2016.

• Amazon also has renewable energy projects underway in Virginia and Indiana. Last week, Facebook announced it will use 100% wind energy to run its new data center in Texas.

Dive Insight:

As consumers and businesses generate more and more data, the demand for data centers grows. At the same time, companies face growing pressure to integrate renewable energy sources into their new data center projects.

Federal legislation that will place caps on carbon emissions appear inevitable, pushing several companies to announce plans to launch renewable data center projects in the last several months.

But experts say companies may find it tough to undertake renewable projects that make sense, as most renewable energy sources come with a big price tag. Companies may also find it challenging to reach the scale they need to successfully support the power requirements of an entire data center.