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Amazon Still Lags Behind Apple, Google in Greenpeace Renewable Energy Report (greenpeace.org)
Amazon's cloud-computing unit says that one day it will rely solely on renewable power. But Greenpeace reports that a ramp-up in data-center construction in Virginia, where electricity comes mostly from coal and nuclear plants, makes that goal elusive. From the report: Apple, Google, Facebook, and newcomer Switch are taking some of the greatest strides towards 100% renewable energy, while companies such as Netflix, Amazon Web Services, and Samsung are lagging. The findings in Greenpeace USA's report outlines the energy footprints of large data center operators and nearly 70 of the most popular websites and applications. "Amazon continues to talk a good game on renewables but is keeping its customers in the dark on its energy decisions. This is concerning, particularly as Amazon expands into markets served by dirty energy," said Greenpeace USA Senior IT Analyst, Gary Cook. "Like Apple, Facebook, and Google, Netflix is one of the biggest drivers of the online world and has a critical say in how it is powered. Netflix must embrace the responsibility to make sure its growth is powered by renewables, not fossil fuels and it must show its leadership here," continued Cook.
Companies care about making money, and they only care about being green if the PR and money saved on penalties outweighs the money lost being green.
What I care about is whether their service is efficient and affordable. Why again do I care about where they get their energy from?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
They produce nothing
Did you just explain, why Oligarchy is better than Democracy?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
And geothermal, where possible.
Other then companies using the more expensive power so everyone else can use the cheaper coal power?
I'm not sure Amazon is allowed to build their own nuclear power plants ;)
Companies care about making money, and they only care about being green if the PR and money saved on penalties outweighs the money lost being green.
You are presuming that being green and saving money are mutually exclusive. This is untrue as a general proposition. In actual fact using renewable energy sources and eliminating waste streams actually can save considerable sums of money. Companies locate data centers in places where hydro power is cheap and plentiful. Putting solar panels on the roof can save substantial sums by leveling energy costs for cooling a data center. Using green sources of energy can save money on pollution mitigation. And yes there is a PR value to it as well. Green does not inherently equal expensive and in actual fact it can be more cost effective. It's the companies that don't grasp this fact that are actually often wasting money.
Why would you expect Amazon to care if it's got some label for using renewable energy? There are few companies more concerned with the bottom line. Bezos wants whatever will save the company money. He doesn't care about his workers or people or privacy or anything. Environmental concerns are an externality that can't be considered for this company. Just look at the thread above with the title "So?". The customers don't care either. As long they get all the shiny and it's cheap, really cheap, regardless of what got bowled over (worker rights, privacy, etc.) to make that important shiny so incredibly cheap, the rest of the world can roast. Buying stuff is the only thing that matters.
Look, a solar panel never makes in it's usable life the amount of energy it takes to produce
That hasn't been true for several years now. By 2020 it's estimated that solar panels will pay back all the energy they've ever taken to manufacture all of them.
the same with wind power.
Wrong again. Did you actually bother to research any of this? 20 Seconds on Google would have corrected your false assertions.
A coal plant returns the power it took to build with all parts in less than a month.
At the cost of dumping massive amounts of pollutants (including CO2) into the atmosphere for decades. When coal actually has to pay for the full energy (and financial) cost of mitigating the pollution it costs then you might have a fair comparison.
Look, a solar panel never makes in it's usable life the amount of energy it takes to produce, the same with wind power. Do the math with cost of production and construction. It NEVER works.
The internet disagrees with you. On both points.
Do you have links or other supporting information you can cite?
If not, consider changing your position.
Spreading these sorts of lies will only hurt our efforts to avoid a real and imminent crisis.
Greenpeace has lost all credibility. They are out for their own aggrandizement, and their primary goal is to perpetuate themselves. If they actually have any positive effect on environmental or conservation causes, it is entirely by accident.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
They "won" the economic game. So they can focus on making the world better (like being green) or some expensive hobby (like sending rockets to space).
For some people the "game" is never over. When someone like that is the majority shareholder then the company has no one to put the brakes on their amoral quest to pillage and plunder the economic commons for the sake of an ever increasing high-score. And guess what kind of person tends to be really good at playing the "game?" The kind who ends up majority shareholder of a powerful company.
Whereas when the shareholders reflect the ideals of their social group - as in a shared belief that the earth needs tending to in order to remain a healthy abode for humans - their collective will can change the company's direction to reflect those priorities.
In other words, your theory is just selective rationalization. A tyrant can do evil as well as good. The great thing about having a single vision is that it ignores all those irrelevant details that might contradict it. Details like the costs to people who are not the majority shareholder.
Used to be a donator to greenpeace. Stopped when I found out their research just gives larger companies a worse score on environment issues when they simply can't find any data. They also 'faked' top ten lists. Companies that didn't do that bad were added in a list as doing pretty bad because it was a well known company.
Sadly, greenpeace puts message before research. And can't be trusted.
(Do note that I have not read this specific research, but I simply don't trust them anymore).
Bezos has transformed the Washington Post into his personal propaganda machine.
What an ASSHOLE this guy is.
I'll never use Amazon, and if the rest of you had a spine, you wouldn't either.
Solar doesn't work? Nature disagrees with you.
Plants are powered almost exclusively by the sun. Funnily enough, they don't die during the night or when it is cloudy. That's because - unsurprisingly .- they aren't stupid: they store energy produced during the day into complex hydrocarbons that they can break apart when they need energy. It's like a battery, you see.
And this technology scales. If you remember your history, plants dominated the planet millions of years before the first animal emerged. Even today, you depend on these solar powered plants (heh) to stay alive. Remove plants, and eventually you asphyxiate. Remove plants, and you get no salad (also, no beef, because cows die of hunger).
The Sun has been powering life on this planet for millions of years. It makes absolute sense that we harness that power as much as possible. Our only drawback currently is our storage technology, but we are already working on it.
Nuclear and Fusion are VERY LONG terms solutions, and absurdly expensive. Yeah, I know the output $$$ far outweighs the input $$$, but that it still takes about 20 years (IIRC) for a Nuclear Power plant to pay for itself. Not a lot of countries can afford that sort of long term investment, especially considering the absurdly high level of risk with regards to accidents and waste management (which isn't as easy as digging a hole in the ground and letting the waste sit there).
So solar is the way to go for now.
Nobody cares.
Signed,
The sane people of the world
Do you have ESP?
hat I care about is whether their service is efficient and affordable. Why again do I care about where they get their energy from?
Presumably because you don't like the negative effects of living in a place with polluted air and water. Have you ever been in a city with serious smog problems? I have. It's not pleasant. I won't speak for you but personally I prefer to breathe clean air. Furthermore by sourcing their energy smartly they can actually save money thus making their service more efficient and affordable.
I can almost see it now at next year's re:Invent...
And that's why we're proud to present Amazon's new product offering, Amazon CloudIsotope
Total energy payback for a wind turbine is about typically 3 months. Current solar panels often pay back all the energy used in their manufacturing, transport and installation in roughly a year (or little over 2 years in places such as Northern Europe) and last about 30 years. About a decade
I strongly suspect your assertion about coal plants returning more energy than it took to construct them after a single month is outright wrong, but you are also neglecting the constant energy input required to keep it running, exceeding what it produces. Even if you could wave a magic wand and create a fully-constructed coal plant out of nothing it would never be energy positive during its entire life.
Hydroelectric and geothermal are wonderful if you happen to have the opportunity. Most places don't.
Who the hell cares what greenpeace says ? I do care about nature but i certainly pay no attention to what greenpeace says. And hippies in general.
They aren't a scientific institution, they are a lobby group for simpletons who cannot abide by the conclusions of scientists when they differ from their religious preconceptions. They are rather anti-science. They fish arguments from fringe individuals and see most scientists or engineers or physicians as suspects and in collusion with some vague plot from the industry they consider a priori as evil.
I liked them when they were defending the whales but nothing more.
Actually, finding out what to do to favour responsible behaviour in the industry and what to buy is extremely complicated. You need a lot of input from a lot of different kind of good experts. And the conclusions are not always intuitive.
Like when i read that depending on where you live driving an electric car pollutes more than driving a diesel. Or in some places installing solar panels isn't green because of the configuration of the electric grid. The answers are never simple.
That is why we need robust institutions with their own experts. As independent as possible.
Completing the broken sentence in the first paragraph:
About a decade ago it would take nearly 4 years to pay back all the energy spent in creating a panel - including the cells, frame and everything else - but things have improved since then. I think you got your "10 years" figure from the time it takes for a the savings on a consumer PV panel to pay back the purchase price. That's not the lifespan of a panel.
will declare Greenpeace to be the terrorist organization it really is. Outlaw Greenpeace.
People still take the uneducated eco-terrorists seriously? I thought they lost all their credibility years ago.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
100+% margins vs 20% margins.
Duh.
CO2 is -not- a pollutant.
CO2 most certainly is a pollutant in the quantities we are releasing it into the atmosphere. Anything can be a pollutant when it is in a place that screws up an ecosystem and CO2 is no exception. We are taking billions of tons of carbon that has been sequestered for millions of years and releasing it very rapidly into an ecosystem that has not evolved to handle it. That is a pollutant by any reasonable definition of the term.
That said, even if we pretend (wrongly) that C02 isn't a pollutant, there is plenty of other toxic crap coming out of those smoke stacks that is not being controlled or paid for.
By all means, cover the datacenter roof with solar panels to buy down the cost of power in the daytime. But keep it connected to the grid for the baseload reliability a dense cube of servers needs.
Amazon lags in green tech! Save the Amazon rainforests!
Make up your fucking mind.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
While Apple, Google and Amazon all have electronic services delivery, Amazon is, by far, the largest in terms of physical plant for their vast goods-shipping network.
While yes, Apple and Google do ship, they simply don't have the sheer scope of what Amazon is dealing in.
So yeah, Amazon's going to come in behind those two.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
That's why the original leader/founder left.
Are you talking about Bob Hunter? He left when died of prostate cancer in 2005. Possibly you mean David McTaggart? He left when he died in 2001 of a car accident. Dorothy and Irving Stowe are also both dead and supported Greenpeace until their dying days. Or do you mean this guy?
This is fake and greenwashing. Google claims it's carbon-free only because they bought enough carbon credits to do so. That's not what being green really means and it's disappointing these companies feel the need to defraud the public.
Kriston
If Amazon had any interest in decreasing their carbon footprint they would start using reusable collapsable packaging for prime users. I feel awful for all the packing material I throw away or recycle from them.
At his point, what difference can it possibly make. The science is definitely settled.
"Barack Obama has only four years to save the world. That is the stark assessment of Nasa scientist and leading climate expert Jim Hansen who last week warned only urgent action by the new president could halt the devastating climate change that now threatens Earth. Crucially, that action will have to be taken within Obama’s first administration, he added."
—“President ‘has four years to save Earth’,” the London Guardian, January 17, 2009.
If Amazon was serious about their centralized transaction and distribution model, their commitment to moving products from manufacture to seller over ever increasing distances, their commitment to deep processing power, with its necessity for an energy-rich future...
They would get behind Thorium and LFTR.
And let other silly, deluded corporate hobbyists fund the low-yield weather-intermittent countless points of failure crap.
__
"DID SOMEONE SAY THORIUM?" TIME ONCE AGAIN FOR
CONFESSIONS OF A SLASHDOT ENERGY AND LFTR FANBOI
Updated for 2017! All original unless noted! Browse! Engage! Plagiarize!
This letter of mine has been in Donald Trump's possession since May 2, 2016 . If you read it you may discover why I considered Trump the only candidate worthy of such a message. In his pronouncement to pursue energy self-sufficiency in general and consider nuclear an essential part of the mix, there is hope. The others offer nothing but more years of bad road and an obscenely stupid fixation on base load irredeemables (wind and solar). Trump is literally the only one with the courage to stand up to the tripe.
In 2013 I reached out to Senator Inhofe to propose an energy path for Oklahoma and the country.
Also in 2013 I reached out directly to Halliburton Corporate with a very specific idea that just might have laid groundwork for their secure long-term future. At the time their stock was climbing towards $70 and they probably thought they didn't have a care in the world. Not so good now. Not a glimmer from this one either. I had high hopes for it.
Mentioned in these letters is Faulkner's 2005 paper on Electric (HVDC) pipelines, and the two hour Thorium Remix 2011 video presentation (time index below).
It's fun to discuss nuclear energy on Slashdot ... It's time for Elmo to Grow Up!... A brief history of nuclear energy fear in these United States... You should fear everything besides nuclear energy... Solar drives California towards cannibalism, or your money back... There's a fire, and people pushing intermittent sources are blocking the exits... Hiding wonders of the modern world from the kids...Some energy priorities... 2016: The Year in energy... Meet the folks of TBA, a city willing to store spent nuclear fuel... Nothing is as patriotic as mining... A move to LFTR may be the only way to preserve modern society in the face of disaster (volcanism, Maunder minimum)... Can the grid 'black-start' after a disaster?... Sometimes you just have to point things
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>