What is the current amount of solar capacity online in AMT's sites in Africa and India 
ht to be a meaningful player in the space.
Meanwhile on the international side. Most of our markets are at least five years behind the US, in terms of deployed network technology. As a result, the edge compute opportunity and other potential 5G enabled business models are further down the road. The strategic advantage that we expect to have in these areas similar to what we did with our core tower business is the ability to prove out these models in the United States first, and then export them internationally when the time is right.
Over time, we believe that our global interconnected reach will be critical in the context of an ever more global, multinational customer base, and their need to support their customer's global needs. In the meantime, one of the main focus areas of our platform extension efforts today throughout Africa and India especially, is on developing power as a service, to drive operational efficiency and cost savings, while materially reducing the carbon footprint of the wireless industry. Throughout much of Africa, and India, the electric grid is inherently unreliable. It is part of our service offerings, we are responsible for providing onsite power for our tenants.
In the past, this was almost exclusively delivered through diesel generators with significant daily run times and diesel usage at considerable expense. More recently, as solar and lithium-ion battery technologies improve are becoming more cost-effective, we have accelerated our adoption of these technologies to make power provision in our sites more efficient, and environmentally friendly. In fact, at the end of 2019, we had 12.3 megawatts of solar capacity already online with more than 4,500 sites utilizing lithium-ion batteries. To date, we've invested nearly $135 million on fuel and power optimization solutions, and expect to continue to make these investments as we improve site reliability levels for our tenants.
As we disclosed in our latest sustainability report, our long term target is to reduce our scope on fossil fuel consumption in diesel related greenhouse gas emissions in Africa, and India by more than 60%, or 140 million liters of diesel annually by 2027. Already, we have made significant progress toward that objective having reduced annual diesel consumption by 65 million liters since 2017, after normalizing for site count growth. To give you a sense of what that translates to, it's essentially the equivalent of taking more than 35,000 cars off the road for a full year or preserving more than 65,000 acres of forest. In addition, we are currently exploring the development of science-based emissions targets consistent with the Paris Agreement goals.
These initiatives are in their early stages. We are excited about the impact that we can make going forward. Just like in the United States where we are seeking to leverage our expanding platform to augment the value of our communication sites, we believe that we can translate our expertise and industry leadership in fuel and power internationally into tremendous added value. Reducing the total cost of ownership for our tenants further improving up times and developing more efficient, clean, renewable networks will benefit stakeholders across the value chain.
We're committed to making substantial additional progress over the long term. Just like in the United States where we are working on a number of other initiatives, we're continuing to look at things like fiber to the tower, fiber to the home, and other transport models. In many of our international markets as ways to further broaden our addressable market and add value. These valued propositions would all be predicated on long-term contractual commitments with multi-tenant and multi-service elements that mirror our existing tower model.
in closing, on a global basis, we are in a time of tremendous technological digital transformation. Access to ubiquitous broadband connectivity has never been more important, particularly, in the context of the ongoing pandemic. There are new use cases emerging every day with modern wireless 
ht to be a meaningful player in the space.
Meanwhile on the international side. Most of our markets are at least five years behind the US, in terms of deployed network technology. As a result, the edge compute opportunity and other potential 5G enabled business models are further down the road. The strategic advantage that we expect to have in these areas similar to what we did with our core tower business is the ability to prove out these models in the United States first, and then export them internationally when the time is right.
Over time, we believe that our global interconnected reach will be critical in the context of an ever more global, multinational customer base, and their need to support their customer's global needs. In the meantime, one of the main focus areas of our platform extension efforts today throughout Africa and India especially, is on developing power as a service, to drive operational efficiency and cost savings, while materially reducing the carbon footprint of the wireless industry. Throughout much of Africa, and India, the electric grid is inherently unreliable. It is part of our service offerings, we are responsible for providing onsite power for our tenants.
In the past, this was almost exclusively delivered through diesel generators with significant daily run times and diesel usage at considerable expense. More recently, as solar and lithium-ion battery technologies improve are becoming more cost-effective, we have accelerated our adoption of these technologies to make power provision in our sites more efficient, and environmentally friendly. In fact, at the end of 2019, we had 12.3 megawatts of solar capacity already online with more than 4,500 sites utilizing lithium-ion batteries. To date, we've invested nearly $135 million on fuel and power optimization solutions, and expect to continue to make these investments as we improve site reliability levels for our tenants.
As we disclosed in our latest sustainability report, our long term target is to reduce our scope on fossil fuel consumption in diesel related greenhouse gas emissions in Africa, and India by more than 60%, or 140 million liters of diesel annually by 2027. Already, we have made significant progress toward that objective having reduced annual diesel consumption by 65 million liters since 2017, after normalizing for site count growth. To give you a sense of what that translates to, it's essentially the equivalent of taking more than 35,000 cars off the road for a full year or preserving more than 65,000 acres of forest. In addition, we are currently exploring the development of science-based emissions targets consistent with the Paris Agreement goals.
 These initiatives are in their early stages. We are excited about the impact that we can make going forward. Just like in the United States where we are seeking to leverage our expanding platform to augment the value of our communication sites, we believe that we can translate our expertise and industry leadership in fuel and power internationally into tremendous added value. Reducing the total cost of ownership for our tenants further improving up times and developing more efficient, clean, renewable networks will benefit stakeholders across the value chain.
We're committed to making substantial additional progress over the long term. Just like in the United States where we are working on a number of other initiatives, we're continuing to look at things like fiber to the tower, fiber to the home, and other transport models. In many of our international markets as ways to further broaden our addressable market and add value. These valued propositions would all be predicated on long-term contractual commitments with multi-tenant and multi-service elements that mirror our existing tower model.
in closing, on a global basis, we are in a time of tremendous technological digital transformation. Access to ubiquitous broadband connectivity has never been more important, particularly, in the context of the ongoing pandemic. There are new use cases emerging every day with modern wireless 