Amazon employees accused the company of distorting its true environmental performance

The company is “misrepresenting the truth” about how much of its data centers are actually powered by renewable energy, a group of Amazon employees has said. According to Datacenter Dynamics, this contradicts a recent ESG report, which reported that the giant switched to 100% renewable sources seven years earlier than planned.

The Amazon Employees for Climate Justice (AECJ) initiative group shared the results of its own investigation, according to which the company’s data centers are only 22% supplied with energy from renewable sources. AECJ argues that Amazon is hiding the fact that energy-intensive data centers operate in the heart of the US coal region, and further development of data centers will increase oil and gas consumption. The company is investing in data center expansion in areas heavily dependent on oil, gas and coal for energy supply, such as Northern Virginia and Saudi Arabia.

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The AECJ’s findings are based on the fact that Amazon, like many organizations, claims to gradually move towards zero emissions by purchasing Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) that indirectly offset emissions associated with powering the company’s facilities from power plants on fossil fuels. AECJ calculates that 68% of REC purchases are “low-quality” and have nothing to do with the production of new renewable energy. In fact, we are talking about Amazon buying certificates for electricity that has already been generated and spent by completely different people.

Doubts about the effectiveness of REC have already led to some companies moving to acquire so-called. 24×7 power purchase agreements (PPAs) that provide an equal hourly match between the electricity actually used by the data center and the “clean” energy generated. For example, Google and Microsoft have concluded and intend to conclude such agreements in an even larger volume, but Amazon has not yet joined them, although it is concluding regular PPAs en masse.

The group quoted employees who wished to remain anonymous as saying that the company may be deliberately lying to everyone by sending out photos of solar power plants to convince them of a green development policy. Employees believe that Amazon should communicate real progress toward carbon neutrality to at least its “insiders” so that they will do more to achieve this goal.

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AECJ was formed in 2019 to protest the company’s inaction amid the climate crisis. The group is calling on management to make big investments in renewable energy in the same regions where Amazon’s new data centers are slated to open. It also highlights that despite regular and extensive reporting on progress on sustainability, there is in fact no comprehensive plan to achieve net-zero emissions by 2040.

A representative of Amazon’s management noted that the report contains correct data and uses transparent methods, and the data from the report presented by opponents is incorrect because it refers to information and opinions from sources outside the company who do not have knowledge of the issue. Just the other day it was reported that Amazon’s emissions (unlike Google and Microsoft) have been falling for several years in a row. True, in absolute terms they grew by 34%.