Japan Data Center Market Update 6: Renewable Procurement and Low Latency Increasingly Dictate Data Center Locations and Design

JERA and AWS Explore Renewable Power Supply Partnership for Data Centers

JERA announced on February 5 that it has begun discussions with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to deepen collaboration across both the digital and energy domains. The companies will explore supplying JERA’s renewable energy to AWS-operated data centers in Japan and overseas.

The scope of the partnership is under discussion, with JERA expected to tailor power supply solutions to AWS’s evolving needs. As part of its longer-term energy strategy, JERA is also advancing hydrogen, ammonia, and carbon capture and storage (CCS), which could eventually support lower-carbon electricity supply for large-scale data center customers. Amazon has set a target to achieve net-zero CO₂ emissions across its operations by 2040 and continues to expand its renewable energy investments globally.

This is not JERA’s first agreement with a major US technology company. In September last year, it signed a 15 MW virtual PPA with Google to supply non-fossil fuel certificates to a data center in Inzai, Chiba Prefecture. JERA currently operates or is constructing more than 67 GW of generation capacity and is targeting 20 GW of renewables by 2035.

Hokkaido Renewable Data Center to Link With Tokyo via IOWN Network

Tokyu Land will introduce NTT East’s IOWN All-Photonics Network (APN) at its “Ishikari Renewable Data Center No.1,” scheduled for completion in March, creating the first direct IOWN link between Ishikari, Hokkaido, and Tokyo’s Otemachi from August. IOWN’s high-capacity, low-latency connectivity is expected to eliminate distance constraints, allowing the Ishikari facility to function as if it were adjacent to central Tokyo. The link also expands use cases beyond disaster recovery to include AI workloads using GPUs, digital twin computing, cybersecurity resilience, and capacity extensions for urban data centers.