PARIS, June 12 (Reuters) - German utility RWE

and tech giant Amazon ( AMZN ) announced a strategic framework

agreement on Thursday, where the utility will provide clean

power delivery and in exchange receive cloud services.

The cloud services cover artificial intelligence and data

analytics in exchange for electricity supplied from RWE's wind

and solar facilities, some of which are already in operation and

some are under construction.

CONTEXT

RWE is a major utility in Europe with a large portfolio of

renewable energy both in operation and in development which it

can then sell to Amazon ( AMZN ) or other data centre hyperscalers to

help companies reach green energy targets.

The partnership announcement is a start, with ties expected

to develop and deepen between the two companies, RWE said.

KEY QUOTES

"(The strategic partnership) enables us to focus and look at

longer term options in more detail," said Simon Stanton, RWE's

head of Global Partnerships and Transactions.

These longer-term options include the development of

renewables, power purchase agreements, and enabling the build

out of AWS's data centre infrastructure, he added.

"Advancing digitalization and electrification are also

driving up demand for electricity," Chief Commercial Officer of

RWE Supply & Trading, Ulf Kerstin, said.

"Our competitive portfolio of renewable and flexible energy

generation is ideally suited to meet this demand," he added.

BY THE NUMBERS

Amazon ( AMZN ) has contracted around 1.1 gigawatts of renewable

energy across seven power purchase agreements with RWE in the

United States, the statement said.

RWE's Supply & Trading division has also migrated

mission-critical applications to AWS cloud services, including

their Energy Trading and Risk Management platform enabling 30%

performance improvements with end-of-day runtimes, it said.

WHAT'S NEXT

Going forward Amazon ( AMZN ) will support RWE's continued innovation

in trading, commercial asset optimization including renewables,

and energy AI applications, the announcement said.

The collaboration will deepen ties to RWE's AI Research

Laboratory in Seattle to accelerate the development of advanced

AI forecasting models through large computational power and

cloud elasticity, it said.

(Reporting by Forrest Crellin; Editing by Emelia

Sithole-Matarise)