As a result, to achieve 100 percent clean energy — at least on paper — companies often buy what are known as renewable energy certificates, or RECs, from a solar or wind farm owner. By buying enough credits to match or exceed the energy its operations use, a company could make the claim that its business is powered entirely by clean energy.
“That’s what we do, buy RECs for projects that are not yet operational,” Ms. Hurst said.
In a report published by the Amazon employee group after the company’s announcement, the workers said their research concluded that after deducting Amazon’s use of credits, the real investment in clean energy was just a fraction of what was publicized.
“Buying a bunch of RECs doesn’t help anything,” Ms. Stokes said. “You just have to be investing in real projects.”
Kind of the main punchline of the article. It’s indulgences again
Yep. In the early days of transferable renewable energy credits, they were very much hoped to result in additional renewable energy construction, but it became clear within a few years that they don’t have that impact.
They were an intentional lie by industry, just like post consumer plastic recycling.
There’s a whole bunch of those in Alberta (Canada), the biggest solar farm in the province is owned by Amazon if I’m not mistaken.
With local laws you can’t prevent someone from exploiting petrol found on your lot but you can’t allow a company to install wind turbines on your lot…
Even if they are right, they produce a lot of emissions and waste anyway. Green energy is a spook. Let’s look into how they can reduce their total energy consumption, especially their delievery subsidiaries that somehow aren’t a part of their business.
Amazon fired Emily Cunningham for pushing the company to give a shit about its emissions.
Only after that did they whip up their “climate pledge” and buy the rights to name a hockey arena after that pledge.
Emily and others successfully organized an employee protest at a shareholder meeting in favor of a shareholder resolution around emissions and climate. I’ll never forget when she stood up and nervously started reading the resolution, when about half the room (all amazon employees, all wearing white shirts) stood up in solidarity with her. Jeff was backstage. He ignored her calls to step out and respond.
I will never in my life trust a damn thing Amazon says about their own impacts to climate or the environment (or really anything at all)
Jeff “Integrity” Bezos.
