Big Tech and Climate Change

By Andrew Clark

In July, Microsoft began testing hydrogen fuel cells for data center power back-ups. These cells could be powered by zero-carbon hydrogen generated from renewable energy sources, opposed to the current diesel generators stationed at 160 data centers worldwide. By 2030, Microsoft plans on phasing out all diesel generators. For almost a decade, the company has been 100% carbon neutral, meaning all emissions that they emit are being counter-acted with carbon offsets.

In June, Amazon set their sights on running on 100% renewable energy by 2025, 5 years earlier than they originally planned for. Bezos in February pledged to donate $10 billion of his own money to scientists, activists and nongovernmental organizations working to fix climate change. This is being done under the newly founded Bezos Earth Fund. Mackenzie Scott, Bezos' ex-wife also has pledged to donate $1.7B of her wealth, $125M of that going to climate change actions.

In October, Amazon unveiled their first custom electric delivery vehicle partnered with Rivian, an electric car manufacturer. Their goal is to have 10,000 new vans on the road by 2022 and 100,000 by 2023. However, Amazon's previous track record on climate change steps has been slow.

Last January, Amazon was under fire for threatening to terminate two employees for speaking out about the company’s environmental policies, the Washington Post reported. In 2019, Greenpeace did an investigation that found that only 12% of Amazon’s web services ran only on renewable energy, despite their promise of running fully 100% renewable.

In September, Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, pledged that they will work to run their operations purely on carbon-free energy by 2030. Like Microsoft, they have purchased enough carbon offsets to counter-ac t their emissions since their birth, thus becoming carbon negative. In Google's first decade they were the first major company to be carbon neutral. By 2030, Google’s goal is to be the first company to operate carbon free 24/7 at all of their data centers and campuses. Last year, Google pledged that, by 2022, it would include recycled materials in all of its Made By Google product, a list that includes Pixelphones, Pixelbooks, Google Home speakers, Nest devices, and accessories like phone cases and charging stands.

With the release of the Google Pixel5 and the new line of Nest Devices, they are ahead of schedule. 100% of the aluminum on the Pixel is recycled and the Nest Audio has 70% recycled plastic.

Apple says it runs on 100% renewable energy in their stores, data centers, and offices around the globe. 100% of rare earth materials in the iPhones are recycled using robots. More than 11 million devices were sent by Apple to be refurbished for new users in 2019, a 42 percent increase from the previous year.

During the recent unveiling of the new iPhone 12, it was revealed that going forward, iPhones will not be accompanied by wired headphones or a power adapter. The decision was made on an environmental aspect.

Lisa Jackson, Apple VP of environment, policy and social initiatives, said: “We know that customers have been accumulating USB power adapters, and that producing millions of unneeded adapters consumes resources and adds to our carbon footprint.” Jackson said Apple believes there are over 700 million pairs of wired Ear Pods and around 2 billion power adapters in circulation around the world. “And that’s not counting the billions of third party adapters.”