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In 2014, Amazon announced its intention to power its fleet of data centers expanding with 100% renewable energy. Apple, Facebook and Google had announced similar commitments two years ago, and pressure from consumers and environmental groups has prompted Amazon to do the same. Over the next two years, the technology giant has made remarkable progress in achieving its goal of financing large solar power plants and wind farms. Then it stopped.
Amazon has not announced any new contract to provide clean energy to its data centers since 2016 and has quietly abandoned plans for one of its last wind farms scheduled last year. Meanwhile, in 2017, according to the internal company Gizmodo consulted, Amazon has made a concerted effort to conquer a new industry, perhaps best summed up by the name of a presentation at Amazon's annual Sales Kick-Off event in February: "Positioning for Success in Oil & Gas. "
In the past two years, while Amazon's clean energy promises were stalled, the world's most customer-driven company has aggressively wooed the fossil fuel industry, entered into markets and entered into partnerships with companies such as BP, Shell and Halliburton, offering data-driven services, such as Machine Learning for Enhanced Exploration, Oil Field Automation via the Internet and transportation of data on remote sites. All of this took place at a time when the most experienced scientists around the world had clearly articulated the threat of climate change and the urgency, as deemed necessary by them, to reduce carbon emissions. never been so well understood.
Amazon Web Service still displays a sustainability page stating "AWS is committed to managing its business in the most environmentally friendly way possible" and "using 100% renewable energy for our global infrastructure". Jeff Bezos, company CEO broke a bottle of champagne at the top of a massive wind turbine to christen a wind farm in Amazon Texas in 2017 in a high-profile public relations stunt designed to broadcast the true energy of the society. Bezos also joined Bill Gates' multibillion-dollar investment fund "focused on tackling climate change by investing in clean energy innovation" in 2016, with great fanfare. And the following year, Amazon made the headlines by joining Apple and Google by signing the "We're still in" commitment to maintain the Paris climate deal to reduce carbon emissions around the world. .
Yet, Amazon's current deployment of renewable energies has reached a record mid-term level. By January 2018, AWS had achieved a 50% renewable energy consumption, the last important step mentioned by the company in its sustainable development schedule. Today, it may even decrease. the company's energy supply, research by Greenpeace's energy analysts indicates that Amazon continues to rapidly build new data centers without adding clean sources of energy.
With the release of its February 2019 report, Greenpeace had nothing to do: "Amazon to break its commitment to Power Cloud with 100% renewable energy," announced its release. "Despite Amazon's public commitment to renewable energy, the world's largest cloud computing company hopes nobody will notice that it is still powering its Internet space," wrote Elizabeth Jardim, head of the campaign of the activist group.
And an internal database of "Key Oil and Gas Accounts" for 2018 consulted by Gizmodo contains dozens of current and targeted customers, including some of the largest private contributors to climate change, such as ExxonMobil and Chevron, as well as entities like Aramco, Saudi Arabia. owned oil company.
Notably, many accounts (such as BP, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Halliburton, HESS, Shell, Schlumberger, and Woodside) are listed in the documents as "2018 Lighthouse Accounts," indicating that Amazon is still in the early stages. development phases of this activity, and these companies have been treated as early users of its oil and gas A calendar of events accessed by Gizmodo lists a detailed log of oil and gas events involving AWS representatives, such as Petroleum Industry Day in Calgary, the capital of the oil industry in Canada, where Jon Guidroz AWS delivered the keynote speech in 2017.
These documents, combined with industry presentations and case studies on the AWS website, show that since at least 2017, Amazon has launched a targeted campaign aimed at conquering the oil market , gas and coal at a time when scientists believe that it is imperative that most fossil fuels be left in the soil if we want to avoid serious climatic disturbances. While the company was giving up, or at best idling indefinitely, it pledged to build more clean energy.
"It's very ironic that companies that are supposed to be at the forefront of innovation and technological progress are taking us back," said climatologist Michael Mann, "with respect to their business practices. The biggest technological challenge we face is the challenge of decarbonising our economy fast enough to avoid the catastrophic impacts of climate change. "
The irony is twofold in this case: While they promise to make their operations more sustainable, Amazon's massive cloud operations seem to be getting dirtier and dirtier, fueled by a growing share of fossil fuels. . AWS then sells its fossil fuel-powered cloud to oil, gas and coal companies to help them find and extract more fossil fuels. At present, Amazon burns the climate on both sides.
In mid-March 2019, just two months after Amazon overturned Microsoft to become the world's most valuable public company, the internet giant sent one of its executives to the IHS Markit CERAweek conference, the oil and gas conference in Houston. CERAweek stands as "the largest annual gathering of senior energy officials, innovators and honest officials providing dialogue and perspectives on the energy future". There, Andrew Jassy, CEO of Amazon Web Services, introduced the leaders of the oil and gas sector to the crowd. moving their operations to the cloud and pointing out how much the company was working with them.
"Many of the things we have built and published recently have been heavily influenced by conversations with our clients and partners in the oil and gas sector," Jassy said from the scene during his "Agora innovation session," " and these are companies like Shell Jassy, one of Amazon's top executives – who reports directly to Jeff Bezos – explained in detail how Amazon helped oil companies extract more oil and gas. gas and save money efficiently and effectively. by automating their operations. (The video of the conference is available online.) Apparently, it was a success.
"Their Agora session drew a huge crowd around the lobby! I thought they were serving alcohol or something like that! "A participant tweeted.
Historically, few people associated Amazon and big oil on a close bed, but this is likely to change quickly. Many of the largest technology companies (Apple is a notable player) are partnering with major oil companies to help accelerate the location and extraction of fossil fuels. Last year, for example, Google opened an oil and gas division and Microsoft signed agreements with giants like ExxonMobil and Chevron. Together, the oil belt and Silicon Valley agreements are worth billions of dollars.
On the CERAweek stage, Jassy has identified three cutting-edge technologies that, with the help of Amazon, will transform the oil and gas industry: machine learning, IoT technology and automation. "You can see that this is changing the way things are going in this industry," said Jassy. "If you look at what Shell is doing, they take all these images and well logs, clean and tag the data, and then try to use learning and construction algorithms that evaluate the features and models that lead to success." wells compared to those that are less so, the ultimate goal being to be able to use machine learning and 100% AI to target wells to exploit. These are intoxicating things. This model is very different from the one that existed in the past. This is a game changer. "
Jassy also believes that more and more oil companies will turn to AWS to find automation solutions. "There are many activities today where human beings are making robots and drones in the future – and no, that does not mean that there will not be any." jobs for human beings – we will not miss them soon. … We are starting to meet with many oil and gas companies that are starting to build drones, "he said, referring to AWS Robotics Robomaker. "All sorts of things that are dangerous and painful for human beings, we will have robots," says Jassy, "and we will use humans to do more value-added activities."
One of the slides from this early 2017 presentation viewed by Gizmodo promises to provide AWS employees with instructions on "how to position AWS and effectively organize your approach for a successful implementation." long term "in the gas industry. Two years later, with a senior executive courting the industry in Houston, dozens of clients on the list, and a detailed public website containing AWS Oil and Gas case studies, efforts are well advanced. Jassy's speech is largely reflective of Amazon's more in-depth description of AWS online for AWS for Oil & Gas (signature: "Cloud computing to enable digital transformation and drive innovation in the oil and gas sector ").
The stated "benefits" range from "Accelerate and Optimize Exploration, Drilling and Production Using AWS Machine Learning and Big Data Tools" to "enable oil and gas companies to reduce the time required to process seismic data from several months to a few days. . "
A box in one of the promotional cards highlights the promises of Amazon:
-Find oil more quickly
-Recover more oil
-Reduce the cost per barrel
Reduce risks and ensure compliance
This can probably be read in the order in which the promises attract the oil companies. AWS also lists its no less extractives, as this will help improve security compliance and monitor equipment for maintenance.
The site is also littered with numerous blog posts and articles touting the AWS 'attractiveness for the oil industry. In one of them, Eddie Murray, the global leader in the oil and gas industry at Amazon Web Services, is encouraging oil and gas companies to migrate their data to the cloud, where they could "apply blueprints". Machine learning to extract more value from this data while storing it in a low-cost storage. services ", such as the" Amazon Glacier ", apparently not ironic.
Amazon has assembled a long list of partners to help potential petroleum customers "innovate and transform quickly with AWS". This list includes companies like Ambyint, a startup that claims to "build the" autonomous car "for Wellmark oil wells" and "creates value for customers by increasing production and reducing costs." "and Landmark, a subsidiary of Halliburton," is the leading provider of technology solutions for data and analytics, science, software and services to the exploration and production industries . "
And AWS provides services to all layers of the fossil fuel society: Mitsui Coal Holdings, a Japanese coal investment company, is a customer. The same goes for Gulfmark Offshore, which manages a fleet of 70 support vessels for oil rigs, and SEAOil, the largest independent oil company in the Philippines. Pacific Inter-Link Group, a palm oil company responsible for the world's largest deforestation in Southeast Asia, plans to save at least $ 650,000 over the next three years through AWS.
Amazon Web Services is a broad web of the Internet as we know it. Because of its lack of transparency, it is impossible to tell what proportion of the Web works on AWS, but researchers estimate that Amazon controls about 35 to 40 percent of the total cloud computing market. By 2018, AWS was more important than its top three competitors – Google, Microsoft and IBM – combined. Netflix, which is responsible for nearly 15% of all global web traffic, is hosted by AWS. The same goes for Airbnb. And Slack, and Yelp. NASA uses AWS. AWS literally hosts millions of websites. That is why, when it breaks down, it can give the impression that it takes all the internet. And it continues to grow at a fast pace.
Jassy, of Amazon, said in his speech that AWS had become a "business generating a $ 30 billion business figure" for the company. "It has risen about 45% from one year to the next. Last year, AWS reported more money than McDonald's. And it's the main source of all Amazon's revenue from operations: Amazon generates more money with AWS than Amazon.com. "Really, we are in the midst of a cloud shift," said Jassy.
That's why data centers are quickly becoming a major energy problem. At present, the information technology sector is responsible for about 2% of global carbon emissions. Some external estimates predict that it will absorb one-fifth of global energy in the next decade, as more and more data-intensive services migrate to the cloud. And that's why Amazon's failure to deliver on clean energy promises remains a serious problem.
In early 2018, Google officially achieved its goal of powering its operations with 100% clean energy. Apple did it too. Facebook says it will succeed by 2020. Microsoft's progress has been slower, but in 2018, it signed what had been announced as the largest corporate solar deal in the United States. -United. Amazon seems to be the only big tech company so stuck in its quest for renewable energy.
While Google and Microsoft are also aggressively pursuing oil and gas contracts, companies have focused on providing clean energy for their own operations. Amazon's desire to conquer the fossil fuel market comes at a time when the company has been neglecting its own stated commitment for two years. According to a December 2018 report in Information magazine, "AWS senior manager Peter DeSantis told colleagues in the company that renewable energy projects were too expensive and did not help him to save money. win customers ".
The results of this philosophy can be seen in the Greenpeace report, which examines AWS's presence in Virginia, according to which "Amazon Web Services meets only 12% of its commitment to renewable energy, while its presence on the coast East and its demand for energy increase. AWS, the report notes, has "built the core of its global infrastructure" in the state, "with a 1.7 gigawatts energy demand spread across 55 data centers in Virginia." That's a 60% increase over the past two years, and the data centers are running at full capacity, consuming energy "equivalent to the electricity required to power 1.4 million US homes each year." The vast majority of this electricity comes from gas and coal – Dominion Energy, the local utility that supplies most of the electricity to what is known as data. Central alley, generates only 4% of its energy with renewable sources.
This should not be surprising: Amazon has been lagging for years on Google, Apple and Facebook to commit to adopting clean energy. Among other factors, another extremely critical report from Greenpeace, detailing the company's reliance on fossil fuels over its cleaner competitors, led Amazon to set itself the goal of using 100% renewable energy.
"They showed little disdain for renewable energy, but after hearing from customers and getting complicated answers for a very long time, they finally got engaged," says Gary Cook, Senior Technology Analyst. of information and responsible for promoting energy at Greenpeace. "So, in 2016, they started signing very large contracts for solar and wind energy. Then they sort of stopped. 2017 was the last time that they were putting online a major project. Their growth therefore exceeded their renewable energy supply in 2017, and since then they have just stopped and their growth has continued at a steady pace. "
Neither Amazon nor AWS responded to my request for comment.
Another growing problem is the notorious secret of AWS. Amazon is the largest US company that refuses to disclose its carbon emissions – until 2018, even ExxonMobil has disclosed its carbon emissions. "They are completely non-transparent," says Cook, which makes it difficult to determine how much clean energy they use or not. (Greenpeace does this by looking at external factors such as the amount of backup energy for which it gets licenses.) It's so difficult and Amazon's policies are so opaque that society does not even shares no data on the type of energy used. its data centers with AWS customers – forcing some AWS-dependent companies into countries that require sustainability reporting in elaborate conjectures.
According to Cook sources, the team that previously ran Amazon's clean energy purchases was in disarray. "All of these people have left the company or have been transferred elsewhere, to our knowledge," says Cook. "In short, they changed their leadership. The new direction was that the direct purchase of renewable energy was not something we wanted to do, not something we wanted to pay, but that the priority was not enough to customers. This is consistent with reports from the Information, which revealed that at least one senior AWS executive had become openly dismissive of renewable energies.
Cook thinks that the explanation of the timeline here – why Amazon seems to have abandoned its commitment to build renewable energy at that time – is relatively simple. "What's going on in 2016? Donald Trump, is that it? "They will probably be less attentive to their own performance with Trump as president." Since Amazon's approaches to clean energy have always been largely reactionary, its support for sustainability is at best tenuous, so it makes sense to drop the act when the pressure allows it. up. For the most part, the strategy seemed successful: it apparently spent years without making progress on its renewable energy goals, and few of them noticed it.
Even when he bought clean energy, he did it with a lot of half-measure and cold calculation. Take, for example, Amazon's maneuvers in the renewable energy credit (REC) market.
"Renewable energy projects in the United States have two things to sell, the REC and the electricity itself," says Cook. Electricity companies can use these RECs to meet states' renewable energy needs (many states have standards that require utilities to generate a certain percentage of their energy from renewable sources). but they can also be bought and sold on the open market by companies, in order to meet voluntary commitments on clean energy. Which company is interested in stimulate the amount of clean energy put online would be enough – as Microsoft, for example, did with its RECs after buying clean energy in the region – to buy clean energy and then withdraw credits , so project credits are not used by a third party. public service to meet the renewable energy needs of the state. (Google's policy is also to remove the CERs) This ensures that the project will bring additional renewable energy on the same network as its data centers, as would have been the case without the purchase of Microsoft or Google.
"Although Amazon has also signed major renewable energy contracts," says Cook, "rather than removing the RECs from the companies, it seems to have them arbitrary, selling the RECs. a local project and buying replacement CERs at 1/15 of the average price. County. (In states where the demand for renewable energy is higher, the RECs are worth more: Amazon has won RECs in competitive markets, resold them, and then bought from cheaper markets in markets already flooded by clean energy projects.)
In short, solar and wind projects producing an equivalent amount of clean energy would certainly have been built anyway, but they would have been used to power elements other than data centers. While Microsoft and Google have withdrawn their RECs so that their clean energy projects add As far as total clean energy, Amazon has found a way to take advantage of a slight acceleration of the status quo emerging. "They still put the project online, which is good," says Cook. "They just did it in a way that moved the demand."
Amazon has not been completely inactive on sustainability initiatives. Last year, she invested in a corporate effort to help municipal waste treatment systems improve her recycling programs. Its retail division has announced the installation of solar panels in regional distribution centers in the United Kingdom. In February 2018, Amazon announced the "Shipping Zero" initiative, which aims to return 50% of its carbon-neutral shipments by 2030. No details of the project have been made public, except for the announcement of launch, but it remains to be seen how seriously, the company will take the initiative. But that would be a promising step, to be sure: delivery issues are another of Amazon's biggest sources of pollution. According to estimates calculated by the Seattle division of the 350.org non-profit organization, "Amazon's transportation activities in 2017 have rejected at least 19.1 million tonnes of CO2 in the # 39, atmosphere, the equivalent of the emissions of 4.7 coal-fired power plants running for a year. "Halving would be a huge feat.
In addition, Amazon announces for the first time that it will unveil its carbon footprint this year. However, it will not submit its disclosure to the Carbon Disclosure Project, a non-profit organization, as most companies do, for independent verification. Amazon says it is "developing its own approach to tracking and reporting carbon emissions," according to CNBC.
These announcements took place after several Amazon employees had used their shareholder status to formally request the company to submit a comprehensive plan to combat climate change, showing that in some areas of society, discontent is the current policy of society was increasing. The shareholder proposal will be put to the vote this spring and the story of their efforts has drawn the New York Times' attention.
Public pressure has so far been one of the only reliable levers that have guided Amazon towards cleaner energy sources and more sustainable practices. In the absence of this pressure, Amazon has gone from renewable energy to big oil.
"It's pure hypocrisy," John Broome, philosopher, economist, and Oxford author Climate matters: ethics in a warming world, m wrote in an email. "I think all companies should make a serious effort to reduce their emissions. They certainly should not cooperate to extract fossil fuels. "
Amazon is doing it despite a renewed urgency in climate policy – in a much-discussed UN 2018 report, the most renowned climate scientists have stated that we only had a few years to seriously undertake the process of decarbonising our economies. otherwise we risk a rapid warming. In the current state of affairs, Amazon is accelerating this perspective, both by relying on indeterminate – and potentially increasing – amounts of energy produced from fossil fuels, and by selling its products. technological services to companies that extract these fossil fuels.
"It's more pernicious," says Cook, "to use AI to find oil that would not have been discovered otherwise, whereas what we really need to do is leave that oil in the ground."
And it remains to be seen if Amazon will start implementing its commitments on clean energy promised after two years of silence.
"Renewable energies are an essential part of the solution," said climate scientist Michael Mann, "and we must not only keep up with the current renewable energy goals, but surpass them if we want to avoid dangerous global warming. "
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