€150M in energy, 800 buildings, one unified strategy for security, sustainability and competitiveness.

The Challenge

Amazon was opening 80+ new sites a year in EMEA during the logistics-growth phase. Each site arrived with its own locally-negotiated energy contract, signed under urgency by country teams. At 300 buildings on kick-off, the energy portfolio looked less like a category than a pile of contractual firefighting. No leverage. No pricing coherence. Sites occasionally disconnected for unpaid invoices.

The mandate was easy to state, hard to execute: build one EMEA-wide energy category strategy across 14 countries, without slowing new-site ramp-up, and open the door to renewables. The CFO wanted spend under control. Sustainability wanted decarbonisation. Ops wanted nothing to break.

What I Found

The baseline numbers surprised me as much as the team. Over 60% of contracts were on default supplier rack rates, meaning nobody had negotiated. 30% of the portfolio was on expired contracts, auto-renewed upward. And the real data, MWh consumed per site, was not consolidated anywhere. We had invoices, not data.

On renewables: procurement appetite was zero because ops thought it was "more expensive" and legal was blocking PPAs. On battery storage, three projects had been sitting in legal review for 18+ months. The problem was not willingness, but the absence of a category lead who could arbitrate between "open fast" and "buy well".

The Approach

I built the strategy in three layers, deployed in parallel rather than sequentially.

Layer 1: contract rationalisation. Four-country clusters with flexible framework agreements, pricing indexed to EU exchanges (EEX, Nordpool), volume clauses to absorb consumption growth without re-negotiating. Supplier consolidation from 40+ to 12 preferred and 4 strategic.

Layer 2: unified data and process. Single pipeline from meters and supplier invoices into a consumption dashboard by site, country, typology. Data is the prerequisite to talk savings, carbon, and PPAs in the same language. A Europe-wide process to onboard new sites from day one.

Layer 3: renewable bets. Signing of Amazon's first green energy contracts (source: Climate Action) and support for Amazon EMEA's first solar pilots on 6 fulfilment centres and battery pilots on 3 sites. Goal: prove economic viability before scaling.

The real shift was organisational. Energy procurement moved from contract firefighter to category architect: one leader, centralised steering across BUs and departments, and clear arbitration between open-fast and buy-well.