On Wednesday, Amazon claimed that it reached its goal of sourcing all its power from clean energy sources in the past year. If taken at face value, the announcement would mean it hit the milestone seven years<\/em> ahead of schedule, which would be a monumental achievement. But environmental experts speaking to<\/a> The New York Times<\/em>, including a group of concerned Amazon employees, warn that the company is \u201cmisleading the public by distorting the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n The company\u2019s claim of achieving 100 percent clean electricity is based in part on billion-dollar investments in over 500 solar and wind initiatives<\/a>. The company\u2019s logic is that the energy these projects generate equals the electricity its data centers consume \u2014 ergo, even Steven.<\/p>\n But the renewable energy sources it uses for those calculations are fed into a general power grid, not exclusively into Amazon\u2019s operations. Environmental experts caution that the company is using \u201caccounting and marketing to make itself look good,\u201d as The New York Times<\/em> put it.<\/p>\n \u201cAmazon wants us to think of its data centers as surrounded by wind and solar farms,\u201d the group Amazon Employees for Climate Justice wrote in a statement to The NYT<\/em>. \u201c[But] the reality is the company is heavily investing in data center expansions fueled by West Virginian coal, Saudi Arabian oil and Canadian fracked gas.\u201d<\/p>\n Clean energy experts say Amazon\u2019s inclusion of renewable energy certificates (RECs) in its calculations can be highly misleading. This is because if any power plants on a grid burn fossil fuels, businesses can\u2019t know that the grid uses only clean energy. The Amazon employee group told The New York Times<\/em> that, after subtracting the company\u2019s use of RECs in its calculations, its clean-energy investment was \u201cjust a fraction of what was publicized.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBuying a bunch of RECs doesn\u2019t help anything,\u201d Leah Stokes, associate professor of environmental politics at UC Santa Barbara, told The NYT<\/em>. \u201cYou just have to be investing in real projects.\u201d<\/p>\n To be fair, any movement toward clean energy should be applauded. Amazon still received a \u201cB\u201d grade from the nonprofit CDP (formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project), which was lower than Google and Microsoft\u2019s \u201cA\u201d but still a passing grade. The problem comes when companies use the smoke and mirrors more often associated with marketing and PR to mislead the public into believing they\u2019re doing more for the environment than they are.<\/p>\n \u201cA company needs to actually outline, what are the sources that you are accounting for in that calculation?\u201d Simon Fischweicher, a CDP director, told The NYT<\/em>.<\/p>\n With the meteoric rise of AI<\/a> and the financial pressures to compete<\/a> in this new gold rush<\/a>, companies are now reshuffling their decks and finding new ways to meet their climate goals. However, if that shakeup offers less tangible movement and more weasel words and sketchy logic<\/a>, then that\u2019s creating a new problem on top of their alleged solutions for a genuine crisis<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n