Amazon will not use a controversial natural gas pipeline to power its future data centers, a company executive said.
Amazon planned to connect a data center it was building in Boardman, Oregon, to TC Energy’s Northwest Express gas transmission project, which runs through Canada, Idaho, Washington and Oregon. The tech giant plans to get about 24 megawatts of power from the pipeline. 19,000 units) will be implemented on a temporary basis.
However, the plan was Climate Pledgehas pledged to be net-zero carbon by 2040 and to run its operations entirely on renewable energy by next year. Amazon’s emissions are higher now than they were four years ago, when the company made the pledge.
Its recent move to draw power from natural gas pipes angered climate change protesters this spring, who blocked the entrance to the company’s opening day building in Seattle.
Natural gas is a fossil fuel that is often touted as a cleaner way to transition to renewable energy, but Increasing research Gas Equally Harmful It is released into the atmosphere as coal.
The month after the downtown protests, Amazon withdrew its application to use natural gas, a company spokesman confirmed, but declined to provide details about the data center’s size and scope, when it would open or where it currently plans to power it.
“We are working thoughtfully with Oregon policymakers, environmental advocates and the energy industry to achieve our shared goal of clean, carbon-free energy that can scale to meet the needs of Oregon families, businesses and other constituents,” Amazon said in an emailed statement.
Amazon announced that it is working on renewable energy in Oregon, noting its investments. Announced earlier this year It will be built at the Leaning Juniper Wind Farm, which has been in operation since 2011. Renovate Of the 43 turbines already installed, 36 will be installed over the life of the site. Peak Generation Capacity increased by approximately 9%.
The company’s decision not to use natural gas for its Oregon data center was a victory for Emily Johnston, a lead organizer for the Troublemakers, the group behind the downtown protests, but she called for broader efforts from Amazon to further distance itself from fossil fuels.
Moreover, natural gas pipeline capacity is still being expanded, so other companies will likely still rely on the fuel, Johnston added.
The pipeline, which received federal approval in October, will pump an additional 150 million cubic feet of natural gas daily. Representatives for TC Energy did not respond to requests for comment.
Joshua Basofin, clean energy program director at the nonprofit Climate Solutions, also praised Amazon’s decision to move away from natural gas. Oregonian — and said the move was a step in the right direction. (In past years, Climate Solutions has run Amazon’s now-shuttered philanthropic arm.) One the many Donors.
At the same time, Basofin also highlighted the difficulty of finding enough renewable energy to power these data centers, which store and process vast amounts of information for Amazon and many other companies.
But many of the problems are of these companies’ own making, said Lauren McCloy, policy director at the Northwest Energy Coalition.
Amazon and other companies often propose these types of power-hungry data centers in rural areas that don’t have the resources to meet their power needs.
McCloy said the region has limited generating capacity and is seeing growing demand due to a shift away from fossil fuels and the installation of data centers, which are creating a “big wave” of additional demand. Those projects could drive up prices for other businesses and communities that need more power in the coming years, he said.
“It’s a limited market,” she said.
Sure, Amazon and other companies can point to projects they’re funding that could generate more power, but that’s only part of the equation, McCloy said.
But McCloy said the company, with its “enormous resources,” also needed to tackle new transmission projects, broader efficiency efforts and push for demand management across the grid.
“They’re happy to put pictures of wind farms on their websites and say, ‘Our data centers run on clean energy,'” she says. “But are they addressing the demand side?”
