Here are additional updates.
November 2024: Sustainability News Developments
- Employee Survey: Most Amazon corporate workers are worried that senior leadership is misleading the public about Amazon's climate impact, according to an independent survey spanning 800 Amazon workers.
- Quantum Computing: Amazon has launched Quantum Embark, an advisory program that "aims to help customers get ready for quantum computing by providing an expert-led approach, as they embark on their journey." Rivals such as IBM already offer some quantum cloud services to selected customers and researchers. The IBM quantum effort includes. sustainability working group -- which is researching new methods to help "store and deliver energy more efficiently, improve our power systems, and tackle climate change overall."
- Cloud Services - Building Energy Management: In an expansive blog, Amazon executives explain how how organizations can "use Amazon Web Services (AWS) services to optimize energy consumption in their buildings."
- Partnership - Supply Chain Management: Amazon.com and IKEA, in alliance with about three dozen other companies that depend on ocean freight, will invite shipping firms for the first time to bid on a contract in January 2025 to move their cargo on vessels powered by near-zero emissions e-fuels like e-methanol, Reuters reported.
- Nuclear Commitment: Amazon.com will continue to back a deal for an AWS data center in Pennsylvania powered by Talen Energy's nuclear power plant, despite regulatory pushback, SeekingAlpha reported.
- Nuclear Deal Expansion - Rejected: The U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) rejected an expanded Amazon-Talen Energy nuclear power agreement. FERC members said the deal could raise power bills for the public and affect the grid's reliability, SeekingAlpha reported. Talen Energy is "exploring other solutions" to move forward. The news pressured multiple nuclear energy stocks -- which had benefitted in recent months from various data center partnership news. Related: Nuclear power for data centers.
October 2024: Sustainability News Developments
- Amazon - Nuclear Power: Amazon has signed a nuclear power agreement with Energy Northwest. The deal, focused on the state of Washington, will enable the development of four SMRs (small modular reactors), the company said.
- European Union: During her keynote at the European Tech For Climate Action Conference in Belgium, Amazon Chief Sustainability Officer Kara Hurst described how Amazon and the European Union must continue to partner on sustainability initiatives.
- Partnership - GreenOps Cloud Services: Xebia has signed a five-year Strategic Collaboration Agreement (SCA) with Amazon Web Services (AWS). Together, the two companies plan to serve customers in the Netherlands, UK, Middle East, the United States and central Europe. Key services include migration and application modernization; GreenOps; FinOps; machine learning and generative AI; and digital sovereignty.
- Investment - Nuclear Energy: Amazon Climate Pledge Fund has invested in nuclear startup X-energy, a developer of small modular reactors.
- Recycling - Cloud and Data Center Infrastructure: Amazon Web Services is opening a reverse logistics facility in Dublin, Ireland. An Amazon subsidiary -- known as Re:Cycle Reverse Logistics -- operates the facility.
September 2024: Sustainability News Developments
- Help Wanted - Nuclear Power Expertise: Amazon is seeking to hire a principal nuclear engineer who can has experience in "end-to-end nuclear power project development process from design, regulatory licensing, site permitting, constructability and operations," the company said. The Amazon Web Services hire will be expected to "influence key external partners such as OEMs and developers to design operationally efficient and safe modular nuclear plants" that can deliver "carbon free capacity" to AWS data centers.
- Net Zero Debate: Amazon has pushed back against greenwashing allegations, The Loadstar report. An investigation that questions Amazon's green commitment -- conducted by Stand.Earth Research Group, Ship It Zero and Pacific Environment -- was based on “inaccurate data”, Amazon told Loadstar.
- Partnership - Higher Education: Two North Carolina State professors partnered with Amazon to improve the long-term sustainability of the packaging industry, the university said.
- Partnership - Cloud Services and IT Consulting: Global IT consulting firm Accenture and Amazon Web Services (AWS) are helping customers to gather and manage their ESG data. The partnership involves AWS Sustainability Data Fabric (SDF), a framework that "enables faster and more accurate sustainability insights," the two companies assert.
- Data Centers and Renewable Energy Concerns: Tech giants Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Meta say they buy enough wind, solar or geothermal power every time a big data center comes online to cancel out its emissions, The Washington Post reports. But critics see a shell game with these contracts: The companies are operating off the same power grid as everyone else, while claiming for themselves much of the finite amount of green energy, the Post asserted. Utilities are then backfilling those purchases with fossil fuel expansions, regulatory filings show, the report claimed.
- Amazon - AI Robotics Strategy: Amazon is hiring Pieter Abbeel, Peter Chen, and Rocky Duan and licensing Covariant’s robotic foundation models to "advance the state-of-the-art in intelligent and safe robots," Amazon said. The combination talent hire and licensing deal is an increasingly popular strategy that allows big tech companies to avoid M&A scrutiny from the U.S. government.
- Jeff Bezos Investments - Climate Standards Concerns: Ties between Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' $10B charitable group and organizations that set corporate climate standards are raising concerns of potential influence in setting these norms, the Financial Times reported and SeekingAlpha recapped.
August 2024: Sustainability News Developments
- Data Centers and Green Concrete: The Open Compute Project Foundation (OCP) -- collaborating with AWS, Google, Meta and Microsoft -- will test green concrete for data center floors.
- GenAI Data Centers and Carbon Footprints: Amazon, Microsoft and Meta are concealing their actual carbon footprints, buying credits tied to electricity use that inaccurately erase millions of tons of planet-warming emissions from their carbon accounts, a Bloomberg Green analysis alleges.
- Startups to Know: The Amazon Clean Energy Accelerator 4.0 cohort features 21 startups focused on "the needs of enterprises looking to accelerate their energy transition through emerging technologies."
- AI Cloud Services & Clean Energy: Iberdrola, one of the world’s largest clean energy companies, has selected AWS as its preferred cloud provider for generative artificial intelligence (AI) workloads. Iberdrola will use Amazon Bedrock and Amazon SageMaker, to develop GenAI applications that "drive efficiency, personalize customer-facing interactions, and improve energy production processes," the companies said.
July 2024: Sustainability News Developments
- Solar Farms: Amazon is leveraging Maximo -- an AI-powered robot developed by energy company AES -- to accelerate solar farm installation times.
- Critics Weigh In: Critics such as Stand.earth and Amazon Employees for Climate Justice -- questioned Amazon's sustainability commitment and carbon reduction progress.
- AWS - New Chip: Amazon has introduced the Graviton4 chip for AWS. Among the benefits, according to Amazon: Graviton4 offers four times the performance of Graviton1. Graviton3 uses 60% less energy for the same performance as comparable Amazon EC2 instances (where the compute happens in a data center), and Graviton4 is even more energy efficient, the company said -- though a specific percentage improvement was not disclosed.
- Information Sharing: Amazon has launched the Sustainability Exchange, which provides "shared guidance and information that helped Amazon decarbonize its operations." At launch, the Amazon Sustainability Exchange focus on seven areas: Buildings, Carbon Neutralization, Carbon-Free Energy, Human Rights, Transportation, Waste and Circularity, and Water Stewardship, the company said.
- Carbon Emissions: In Amazon's 2023 sustainability report, the company says its carbon emissions fell for a second straight year. How? After aggressive expansion during the COVID-19 pandemic, Amazon cut spending on new warehouses and cloud-computing data centers, Bloomberg reported. The results are in stark contrast to Microsoft and Google, which saw carbon emissions skyrocket in 2023 amid AI data center rollouts.
More: Continue to the next page for earlier sustainability updates.
