Big Tech's Climate Claims Under Scrutiny: Google and Amazon Face Criticism

Google, Amazon and the problem with Big Tech's climate claims

Last week, Amazon trumpeted that it had purchased enough clean electricity to cover the energy demands of all the offices, data centers, grocery stores, and warehouses across its global operations, seven years ahead of its sustainability target. That news closely followed Google's acknowledgment that the soaring energy demands of its AI operations helped ratchet up its corporate emissions by 13% last year -- and that it had backed away from claims that it was already carbon neutral. If you were to take the announcements at face value, you'd be forgiven for believing that Google is stumbling while Amazon is speeding ahead in the race to clean up climate pollution. But while both companies are coming up short in their own ways, Google's approach to driving down greenhouse-gas emissions is now arguably more defensible. In fact, there's a growing consensus that how a company gets to net zero is more important than how fast it does so. And a new school of thought is emerging that moves beyond the net-zero model of corporate climate action, arguing that companies should focus on achieving broader climate impacts rather than trying to balance out every ton of carbon dioxide they emit. But to understand why, let's first examine how the two tech giants' approaches stack up, and where company climate strategies often go wrong. The core problem is that the costs and complexity of net-zero emissions plans, which require companies to cut or cancel out every ton of climate pollution across their supply chains, can create perverse incentives. Corporate sustainability officers often end up pursuing the quickest, cheapest ways of cleaning up a company's pollution on paper, rather than the most reliable ways of reducing its emissions in the real world. That may mean buying inexpensive carbon credits to offset ongoing pollution from their direct operations or that of their suppliers, rather than undertaking the tougher task of slashing those emissions at the source. Those programs can involve paying other parties to plant trees, restore coastal ecosystems, or alter agriculture practices in ways that purport to reduce emissions or pull carbon dioxide out of the air. The snag is, numerous studies and investigative stories have shown that such efforts often overstate the climate benefits, sometimes wildly.

The Download: Big Tech's climate claims, and reducing your music streaming carbon footprint

This is today's edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology. Last week, Amazon trumpeted that it had purchased enough clean electricity to cover the energy demands of all its global operations, seven years ahead of its sustainability target. That news closely followed Google's acknowledgment that the soaring energy demands of its AI operations helped ratchet up its corporate emissions by 13% last year -- and that it had backed away from claims that it was already carbon neutral. If you were to take the announcements at face value, you'd be forgiven for believing that Google is stumbling while Amazon is speeding ahead in the race to clean up climate pollution. But while both companies are coming up short in their own ways, Google's approach to driving down greenhouse-gas emissions is now arguably more defensible. To learn why, read our story. -- James Temple This piece is part of MIT Technology Review Explains, our series untangling the complex, messy world of technology to help you understand what's coming next. You can read more from the series here.