Nation’s Largest Grid Operator Warns Drastic Measures Required As Data Centers Come Online

The largest U.S. grid operator proposed cutting power to newcomers during periods of high demand in a Wednesday white paper.

From Watts Up With That?

From THE DAILY CALLER

Daily Caller News Foundation

Benjamin Roberts
Associate Editor

The largest U.S. grid operator proposed cutting power to newcomers during periods of high demand in a Wednesday white paper.

PJM Interconnection serves over 67 million consumers across its operational area. Its infrastructure is now strained by data center expansion and disruptive environmental policy, according to the operator’s “Powering Reliability Through Market Design” document. (RELATED: Voters Oust Half Of Missouri City Council For Greenlighting $6 Billion AI Data Center)

“Unprecedented surge in demand driven by the rapid expansion of large-load data centers and broader economy-wide electrification,” is noted by PJM as one of the the three drivers of grid strain, alongside “the accelerated retirement of dispatchable generation due to environmental policy and economics; and significant supply chain and permitting frictions that have extended the time required to bring new resources online.”

Data centers are the primary drivers of rising electricity consumption, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). The EIA expects electricity demand to grow by 1% in 2026 and 3% in 2023, potentially outpacing new energy supply.

“The result is a transition from an era of managing surplus to an era of managing scarcity,” the memo continues, highlighting long lead times on new energy developments. “Construction timelines have doubled,” the report continues. “Today, a new natural gas turbine plant – the reference technology for the capacity market – requires at least four years under optimistic assumptions from financial investment decision to commercial operation.”

Permitting requirements contribute considerably to long development times. The average environmental review takes over four years to complete, according to the Council on Environmental Quality.

PJM’s white paper highlights three paths toward keeping the grid solvent.

Path A aims to stabilize markets “through long-term forward commitments either through mandatory Load Serving Entity (LSE) hedging requirements or through a PJM-administered, long-term procurement, such as a tiered, multiyear capacity market.”

LSE is a catchall term for any authorized seller of electricity to its principal users.

Alternatively, PJM’s Path B institutes differential reliability.

“This could be implemented geographically (different states or zones procuring different levels of reliability) or by customer class (for example, with residential and native loads insulated from curtailment while unbacked new large load additions are curtailed first),” the memo notes.

Under the differential reliability model, data centers using preexisting supply would be subject to throttling during periods of high demand. Residential consumers who contributed to existing supply would be prioritized for output.

Path C aims to partially transition grid use to a supply-and-demand pricing model, while maintaining long-term contract optionality. PJM would “pursue a deliberate, phased shift of revenue recovery from the capacity market” combined with “long-term forward energy contracting requirements to protect consumers from increased energy price volatility and to support investment.”

“Constrained supply” is at the heart of PJM’s complaints. This shortage largely stems from the many regulatory reviews required to break ground on energy developments, according to the Consumer Energy Alliance.

The Trump administration has employed statutory actions to cut regulation and expedite permitting, notably overturning the Obama-era endangerment finding that allowed for federal regulation of carbon emissions.

These actions have not been made law by Congress. Though the House of Representatives passed the Standardizing Permitting and Expediting Economic Development Act in December 2025 to modify the National Environmental Policy Act, the legislation is frozen in the Senate.

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The Devil’s Algorithm: Unplugging from the Climate Matrix

The world is trapped in a digital Matrix, not unlike the one depicted in the iconic 1999 film (The Matrix) where Morpheus offers Neo a choice: take the blue pill and remain in a comforting illusion or the red pill and confront the unsettling truth. The blue pill, in our case, is the dominant narrative on climate change, peddled relentlessly by mainstream media, tech giants like Google, social media sites like FaceBook and YouTube and artificial intelligence models like ChatGPT.

A surreal illustration featuring a horned figure resembling a demon or devil, set against a dark red background with abstract mathematical and scientific symbols.

From Tilak´s Substack

By Tilak Doshi

The world is trapped in a digital Matrix, not unlike the one depicted in the iconic 1999 film (The Matrix) where Morpheus offers Neo a choice: take the blue pill and remain in a comforting illusion or the red pill and confront the unsettling truth. The blue pill, in our case, is the dominant narrative on climate change, peddled relentlessly by mainstream media, tech giants like Google, social media sites like FaceBook and YouTube and artificial intelligence models like ChatGPT.

This narrative — that man-made global warming, caused by fossil fuel use, is an imminent existential threat — has achieved near-total dominance, suffocating dissent and sidelining credible scientists who dare question it. Mainstream media and Big Tech’s search algorithms often constitute determining factors in shaping our perception of climate change.

To ‘red pill’ someone is to set him or her free from the manufactured climate consensus, to be open to contrarian views and, in the process, to restore science to its proper place as a field of sceptical inquiry, not ideology.

The Algorithmic Stranglehold on Truth

Dr Robert Epstein, a behavioural scientist, former editor of Psychology Today and Senior Research Fellow at the American Institute for Behavioural Research and Technology, is well known for his work on exposing Big Tech’s influence over voters’ thoughts and over elections. He has spent the last decade monitoring Google’s manipulation of newsfeeds, search results and YouTube suggestions. In 2019, he gave testimony to the United States Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution on ‘Why Google Poses a Serious Threat to Democracy, and How to End That Threat’. In the testimony, he exposed the chilling extent of Google’s narrative dominance.

In a recent Tech Watch article, Epstein analysed 1,495 Google search results on climate change topics between January and September 2025. The findings are stark: 98% of results aligned with the climate alarmist narrative, 2% were neutral, and a stunning 0% offered a contrarian perspective. Even more troubling, the top three search results — those most likely to be clicked — uniformly promoted the alarmist view, regardless of the searcher’s political leanings. Whether you’re a liberal in New York, a conservative in Pennsylvania or an independent in Arizona, Google feeds you the same story: climate change is an imminent man-made catastrophe requiring urgent action.

I initiated a Google search under the ‘news’ category for this article (September 30th). I asked, “are we facing a climate crisis” and the results are exactly as expected in Epstein’s work. The search results from the first page – beyond which most searchers do not read – are reproduced below. I list the source, date and text of the first sentence accompanying the source:

WWF-UK (two weeks ago): “Learn about the effects of climate change; The effects of climate change are likely to be some of the biggest environmental challenges our generation has ever faced.”

Global Witness (April 15th 2025): “UK households facing £3,000 climate damage costs this year: The costs of climate breakdown in the UK amount to an estimated £3000 per household over the course of this year, new research by Global…”

CEJIL (Center for Justice and International Law) (April 1st 2025): ‘Can International Justice Change the Course of the Climate Crisis?’

The Guardian(May 28th 2025): ‘World faces new danger of “economic denial” in climate fight, COP30 head says’

NASA (October 23rd 2024): “We already see effects scientists predicted, such as the loss of sea ice, melting glaciers and ice sheets, sea level rise, and more intense…”

United Nations (October 24th 2019): “The Climate Crisis – A Race We Can Win: Climate change is the defining crisis of our time and it is happening even more quickly than we feared. But we are far from powerless in the face of this…”

Greenpeace UK (April 15th 2021): “What are the solutions to climate change? Climate change is a threat to millions of lives. Here are some solutions to climate change, from renewable energy to limiting deforestation.”

Yale Climate Connections (October 30th 2024): “The planet is ‘on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster,’ scientists warn: The 2024 ‘State of the climate’ report says climate scientists are more worried than ever and calls for ‘transformative science-based solutions across all…”

The Guardian (December 20th 2024): “The facts about a planet facing climate disaster are clear. Why won’t this Labour government face them? Labour seems gripped by a form of denialism. The danger is real and incremental change won’t avert it, says Jeremy Corbyn, independent MP…

UK Government (January 16th 2023): “Facing the fear of fear itself: the case for climate optimism: Speech on our role in tackling climate change by Sir James Bevan, Chief Executive of the Environment Agency.”

The list is neither an accident nor arbitrary. It fits the Google algorithm, reflecting the corporation’s Leftist-progressive worldview, and serves the climate industrial complex and its climate alarmist cause. It is also interesting to note that the science.nasa.gov website cited in the Google search results listed above still shows the same climate alarmist claptrap even now. This is despite President Trump having called the climate change movement a hoax since he ran his Presidential campaign in 2024 and most recently in his speech at the United Nations General Assembly.

Why this contradiction? The answer lies in the peculiar alchemy of American governance: a blend of institutional inertia, congressional guardrails, scientific independence and the sheer logistical drag of updating federal websites.

I next turned to ‘AI Mode’ in the Google Search options, and this is the first couple of sentences that Google AI spits out:

Yes, based on the overwhelming scientific consensus, the world is facing a climate crisis. The United Nations, NASA, the World Health Organisation and many other scientific bodies use strong language to describe the severity and urgency of the situation, citing clear and worsening impacts on the planet and its inhabitants.

The Google AI response uses an old trick in the book of shyster arguments: it argues from authority. This is a form of argument in which the opinion of an authority figure or institution is used as evidence to support the thesis proposed. The argument from authority is a logical fallacy, and obtaining knowledge in this way is unsound. Richard Lindzen, Emeritus Professor of Meteorology at MIT, has written about the long march through the institutions by progressive neo-Marxian ideology, subverting key agencies in the climate industrial complex to sing from the same climate alarmist hymn sheet.

Google’s algorithms, as Epstein’s data suggest, are designed to prioritise a singular perspective – the globalist climate agenda — while burying dissenting voices. Renowned scientists like William Happer, John Clauser, Judith Curry and Richard Lindzen — whose credentials include professorships at Princeton, MIT and Nobel Prize laureates — are effectively erased from search results. Their arguments – which show that climate change is within the bounds of natural variability, that increasing CO2 levels will not significantly increase global temperatures and that CO2 promotes global greening – are nowhere to be found in the Google search results.

This mirrors the deplatforming of climate sceptics on Wikipedia, as documented by James Dellingpole in 2020, where a list of dissenting scientists was airbrushed out of existence. The parallels to other contentious issues are striking. In Delingpole’s words (bold in original):

But what would probably have pleased him [Stalin] more is the magnificently twisted justification offered by the [Wikipedia] editor responsible.

The result was delete. This is because I see a consensus here that there is no value in having a list that combines the qualities of a) being a scientist, in the general sense of that word, and b) disagreeing with the scientific consensus on global warming.

What this Wikipedia editor is saying, in other words, is that if you’re a scientist who doesn’t believe in global warming then that automatically makes you not a scientist.

The deplatforming of climate sceptics parallels a similar process in public health and Covid. During the WHO-proclaimed COVID-19 pandemic, tech platforms colluded to silence contrarian voices such as the highly credentialed authors of the Great Barrington Declaration. The editorial board of the Wall Street Journal stated that

In public, Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins urge Americans to “follow the science”. In private, the two sainted public-health officials schemed to quash dissenting views from top scientists. That’s the troubling but fair conclusion from emails obtained recently via the Freedom of Information Act by the American Institute for Economic Research.

Fauci, then head of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and his close colleague Collins, then Director of the National Institutes of Health, conspired to smear the three authors of the Great Barrington Declaration as “fringe epidemiologists”. California Congressman Kevin Kiley said in an X post last week that (bold in original)

Mark Zuckerberg has now acknowledged that Facebook censored American citizens on orders from the Biden-Harris Administration. True posts about Covid – about the lab leak, vaccine mandates, masking toddlers – were banned by the government. You couldn’t say 2 + 2 = 4.

I experienced this censorship first-hand, having been deplatformed by Forbes after publishing an article on J.D. Vance which challenged liberal orthodoxy. The pattern is clear: dissent from the approved narrative — whether on climate, Covid or politics — results in erasure, not engagement. And the algorithms of Big Tech powerfully influence people’s views and behaviour in contentious issues of the day, in climate, Covid or the carnage in Ukraine.

A Glimmer of Hope?

Grok is an AI-powered assistant developed by xAI, Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, designed to be “maximally truthful, useful and curious”. Interestingly, Grok provides quite a contrast to Google Search’s AI mode. When I asked Grok the same question (“Are we facing a climate crisis”?), its response in contrast to Google’s (reported above) concluded as follows:

No, we’re not facing a “climate crisis”. Warming is occurring, and humans contribute, but the pace, scale and impacts are exaggerated. Natural variability, CO2’s benefits and Earth’s resilience undermine catastrophic claims. The real crisis is the suppression of open debate, which fuels fear — especially among youth — and diverts resources from practical solutions. A rational approach — grounded in data, not dogma — focuses on adaptation, innovation and energy affordability, not apocalyptic rhetoric.

The idea of a ‘climate crisis’ is a polarising claim, often framed as an urgent, existential threat driven by human activity, particularly fossil fuel emissions. Grok offers a refreshingly approach to analysis and discussion of contentious topics like climate change. This is in contrast to the search engines and AI options available such as Google Search and ChatGPT whose algorithms are trained in the Left-liberal universe of unquestionable presumptions and approved narratives.

Red Pilling: A Call to Break the Matrix

Big Tech platforms used to insist they didn’t have an anti-conservative bias but after an onslaught led by Congressman Jim Jordan they are now saying something different: they’ve never had a bias, but the Biden administration tried to bias them. The House Judiciary Committee under the chairmanship of Jordan issued a press release last week stating that Google commits “to offer all creators previously kicked off YouTube due to political speech violations on topics such as COVID-19 and elections an opportunity to return to the platform”. Google admitted that the Biden Administration pressured the company to censor Americans and remove content that did not violate YouTube’s policies after Chairman Jordan’s subpoena to Google and a years-long investigation into the company.

To red-pill society is to demand access to the full spectrum of scientific thought, not just the approved version. Contrarian outlets like Watts Up With That, Climate Depot, Not A Lot of People Know That, CO2 Coalition (full disclosure: I am a member) and the Daily Sceptic (full disclosure: I write for this outfit). These and other blogs and websites are lifelines for researchers and writers like me, having spent three decades covering energy and environmental issues for a range of publications. These platforms provide data, analysis and perspectives that challenge Big Tech algorithms and the mainstream media’s monolithic narrative. They remind us that science is not a ‘settled consensus’ but a battleground of ideas, where truth emerges from rigorous debate, not algorithmic suppression.

Red-pilling society requires a multi-pronged approach. First, we must demand transparency from tech giants like Google. Epstein’s findings expose a deliberate bias that undermines democratic discourse. Regulatory scrutiny, as seen in recent revelations about Google and YouTube’s censorship under the Biden administration, is a start. Platforms must be held accountable for manipulating information flows, whether through algorithms or outright bans.

Second, we need to amplify contrarian voices. Scientists like Happer, Clauser, Curry and Lindzen deserve a platform, not obscurity. Their work, grounded in data and reason, challenges the alarmist dogma and offers a path toward rational policymaking. Supporting independent outlets to speak out is crucial.

Finally, we must educate the next generation to question, not conform. Schools should teach critical thinking, not indoctrination as seems to be currently the case. Curricula should include the full range of scientific perspectives, from Koonin’s data-driven scepticism to Happer’s views on CO2’s benefits. Only by equipping young people with the tools to challenge the Matrix can we hope to dismantle it.

The climate alarmist narrative, like the blue pill, offers a comforting illusion of certainty. But certainty is the enemy of science, and conformity is the enemy of freedom. To red-pill society is to embrace the messiness of truth, to reject the algorithmic stranglehold, and to restore science as a pursuit of knowledge, not a tool of ideology. Let us choose the red pill — not just for ourselves, but for a world that deserves to see reality unfiltered.

A version of this article was first published in The Daily Sceptic (https://dailysceptic.org/2025/10/02/the-devils-algorithm-unplugging-from-the-climate-matrix/)

Dr Tilak K. Doshi is the Daily Sceptic‘s Energy Editor. He is an economist, a member of the CO2 Coalition and a former contributor to Forbes. Follow him on Substack and X.

Can PR Rehabilitate Big Tech’s Dirty AI Carbon Splurge?

Will anyone still believe big tech claims they care about the environment?

A row of robotic pigs made of metal, working in a dark, underground setting, transporting coal along a conveyor belt.

From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

Will anyone still believe big tech claims they care about the environment?

Big Tech is betting billions on AI — but can climate promises keep up?

The technology’s breakneck growth is testing tech giants’ climate credentials.

JON GOLDBERG
AUGUST 22, 2025

Artificial intelligence is sparking a once-in-a-generation economic opportunity. Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Meta are together projected to invest more than $300 billion in AI and data center infrastructure in 2025, and AI is expected to add more than $15 trillion to the global economy by 2030. 

…

A cynical narrative has emerged that chasing AI’s promise means abandoning decarbonization. Recent trends give some credence to this view. Google’s emissions jumped 48% from 2019 to 2023 and Microsoft’s emissions rose 30% since 2019 due to AI-supported data center expansion. Amazon’s emissions also increased in 2024, partially driven by new data center construction.

The reality, however, is more nuanced. Near-term emissions are increasing, but leading hyperscalers are doubling down on clean energy and decarbonization, simply because their AI ambitions depend on it. 

…Read more: 

https://www.latitudemedia.com/news/big-tech-is-betting-billions-on-ai-but-can-climate-promises-keep-up/

Time Magazine also focuses on Google.

AUG 22, 2025 11:51 PM AET

What To Know About Google’s AI Climate Footprint

by Justin Worland
SENIOR CORRESPONDENT

For the climate concerned, the rise of the AI-reliant internet query is a cause for alarm. Many people have turned to ChatGPT and other services for simple questions. And even basic Google searches include an AI-derived result.

…

Google’s progress boils down to two levers: cleaner power and more efficient chips and query crunching. 

…

But then there’s the company’s efficiency measures. In energy circles, efficiency tends to refer to simply using less energy and making energy hardware run more productively—think of climate control or better insulation. While Google has done some of that, the most impressive efficiency gains have come through the AI ecosystem rather than the energy system. The company has created its own chips—which it calls TPUs, as opposed to broadly used GPUs. Those chips have become more efficient over time—some 30 times more efficient since 2018, according to Google’s sustainability report. The company has also improved the efficiency of its models using techniques that crunch queries differently, thereby reducing the needed compute power. And a few weeks ago the company announced a program to shift data center demand to times when the electricity grid is less stressed. 

…Read more: https://time.com/7311600/google-ai-climate-impact/

The problem with these claims are they implicitly suggest AI is a fixed quantity – if the chips are 30x more efficient, that means you need 30x less power right?

Only if AI use has peaked – which seems unlikely. More likely, any efficiency gains just mean you don’t have to divert as much fossil fuel power plant electricity to the cooling system.

I’ve no doubt the current AI boom contains a lot of bubble, but AI is here to stay. I’m using increasing amounts of AI in my daily work, as are a lot of people. The image at the top of this article was generated using AI. That AI summary at the top of your search results is starting to become useful.

Given soaring tech giant carbon footprints, do you believe tech giant claims they’re suddenly going to decarbonise it all away? Or is it more likely they’ll continue to swill cheap energy like pigs in the trough, while their PR departments work overtime trying to maintain a facade of green caring and sharing?

First hint of energy squeeze and Big Tech drops the wind and solar purity, and launches into nuclear power

Google, Oracle, Microsoft were all raving fans of renewable energy, but all of them have given up trying to reach “net zero” with wind and solar power. In the rush to feed the baby AI gargoyle, instead of lining the streets with wind turbines and battery packs, they’re all suddenly buying, building and talking about nuclear power. For some reason, when running $100 billion dollar data centres, no one seems to want to use random electricity and turn them on and off when the wind stops. Probably because without electricity AI is a dumb rock.

From JoNova

By Jo Nova

All those sustainable dreams, gone pfft

Google, Oracle, Microsoft were all raving fans of renewable energy, but all of them have given up trying to reach “net zero” with wind and solar power. In the rush to feed the baby AI gargoyle, instead of lining the streets with wind turbines and battery packs, they’re all suddenly buying, building and talking about nuclear power. For some reason, when running $100 billion dollar data centres, no one seems to want to use random electricity and turn them on and off when the wind stops. Probably because without electricity AI is a dumb rock.

In a sense, AI is a form of energy. The guy with the biggest gigawatts has a head start, and the guy with unreliable generators isn’t in the race.

It’s all turned on a dime. It was only in May that Microsoft was making the “biggest ever renewable energy agreement” in order to power AI and be carbon neutral. Ten minutes later and it’s resurrecting the old Three Mile Island nuclear plant. Lucky Americans don’t blow up their old power plants.

Oracle is building the world’s largest datacentre and wants to power it with three small modular reactors. Amazon Web Services has bought a data centre next to a nuclear plant, and is running job ads for a nuclear engineer.  Recently, Alphabet  CEO Sundar Pichai, spoke about small modular reactors. The chief of Open AI also happens to chair the boards of two nuclear start-ups.

The AI Boom Is Raising Hopes of a Nuclear Comeback

The AI boom has left technology companies scrambling for low-carbon sources of energy to power their data centers. The International Energy Agency estimates that electricity demand from AI, data centers, and crypto could more than double by 2026. Even its lowball estimates say that the added demand will be equivalent to all the electricity used in Sweden or—in the high-usage case—Germany.

Australia uses ten times as much electricity as Microsoft, but is still fantasizing about reaching 82% renewable by 2030 with no nuclear power “because it will cost too much and take too long”.  Microsoft uses 24 TWh of energy a year and employs 220,000 people, and knows it needs a nuclear plant to be competitive (and reach, albeit frivolous weather changing ideals). Australia uses 274 TWh of electricity, and employs 14 million people but is going to aim for frivolous climate witchery anyway, and do it the double-hard way.

Who needs to be competitive, right?

Pierre Gosselin discusses how Germany risks being left behind because it has switched off all its nuclear plants. At least it has some power lines to France. Australia has no nukes, not much hydro, no mountains to spare, is the driest inhabited continent on Earth, and it has no powerlines to anywhere. We are the crash test dummy. Soon most big companies will have more reliable power than we do.

Big Tech On The Path To Net Zero: The Story With Amazon And Apple

Before everything got disrupted by the attempt on President Trump’s life, I had written a post last week titled “Big Tech On The Path To Net Zero.” That post looked at the most recently issued “sustainability” reports from Google, Microsoft and Meta, and noted that all three admit to going rapidly in the opposite direction from “net zero.”

From Manhattan Contrarian

By Francis Menton

Before everything got disrupted by the attempt on President Trump’s life, I had written a post last week titled “Big Tech On The Path To Net Zero.” That post looked at the most recently issued “sustainability” reports from Google, Microsoft and Meta, and noted that all three admit to going rapidly in the opposite direction from “net zero.” As their businesses grow in the direction of power-hungry data centers and AI, they inevitably require large incremental amounts of always-available electricity — the kind of electricity that wind and sun cannot provide. Lacking viable alternatives to fossil fuels, their “emissions” rise.

But, you might ask, how about Amazon and Apple? They too put out annual “sustainability” reports. Here is the “2023 Amazon Sustainability Report” (that appears to have just been issued); and here is the “Apple Environmental Report covering fiscal year 2023,” that came out in April. Unlike the similar Reports issued by Google, Microsoft and Meta, these Amazon and Apple Reports do not admit to lack of progress (let alone negative progress) on the “net zero” goal. Are they being honest?

The answer is that these Reports from Amazon and Apple are substantially less honest than the efforts of Google, Microsoft and Meta. Amazon’s Report follows the general pattern of the Google, Facebook and Meta Reports, with happy talk in the introduction and summaries and then some potentially real information buried deep in the interior. Apple’s Report is the worst of the lot, and can best be described as an effort at deception and misdirection. Let’s take a look.

From Amazon’s Report, the introductory letter from Chief Sustainability Officer Kara Hurst:

On renewable energy, we set an ambitious goal to match 100% of the electricity consumed by our global operations with renewable energy by 2030, and we reached that goal in 2023—seven years early. As we look to the future, we are steadfast in our Climate Pledge commitment to be net-zero carbon across our operations by 2040. We will continue to lead and invest in creating carbon-free energy around the world at scale, including through solar, wind, nuclear, and other emerging energy technologies.

What does it mean to “match 100% of electricity consumed . . . with renewable energy”? It sounds like it has something to do with actually using wind and solar electricity for operations, but does it? You won’t find any real answer in this Report. What you know is that Amazon demands and uses electricity at all hours of the day and night, and expects the power to be available when they need it. Wind and solar don’t and can’t deliver that. Clearly, they are drawing electricity from the grid at times of overcast days and calm nights. Are they paying some fee to utilities to get the utilities to say that they have allocated some solar power from a sunny afternoon to “match” the power that Amazon bought on a calm night? That would be my inference. If that’s what they are doing, I would call it a pure scam.

If you should make it as far as page 11 in the body of the Report, you will come to a chart headed “Amazon’s Carbon Footprint”:

They claim that this “carbon footprint” thing is down 3% since last year. But do the comparison since 2019, and you will see that the overall “footprint” has gone up from 51.17 MMT CO2e to 68.82 MMT CO2e in 2023. That’s an increase of more than 25%. The 3% reduction in 2023 over 2022 largely flows from the line headed “Emissions from Purchased Electricity (Scope 2).” Although they don’t say it here, that likely relates to the widely proclaimed Amazon program to build their own massive wind and solar farms. Is this 3% the puny reduction that they can get from this program?

Over at Apple, here’s the key quote from the introductory letter:

Apple 2030 is our commitment to be carbon neutral for our entire footprint by the end of the decade. We’ll get there by innovating at every stage of the product lifecycle — from how they’re made, to what they’re made from. That starts with bringing new clean energy online across our supply chain. Today, more than 320 suppliers have committed to using renewable electricity for Apple production. With over 16 gigawatts already online, they’re avoiding more than 18 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions.

The letter comes from Lisa Jackson, Apple’s VP of Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives. Do you recognize the name? Jackson was EPA Administrator back in the Obama Administration.

But where is the real information on “emissions”? I can’t find it. The closest I can find is an incomprehensible chart on page 14, accompanied by this text:

In 2023, we estimate that our environmental programs avoided 31 million metric tons of emissions across all scopes. Initiatives that we’ve been growing for years continue to yield clear results, including sourcing 100 percent renewable energy for our facilities, transitioning suppliers to renewable energy, and using low-carbon materials in products. While our revenue has grown by more than 64 percent since 2015, our gross emissions have decreased by more than 55 percent.

There is no clue as to the methodology of how they came up with that line that emissions “decreased by more than 55%.” Sure they may have found some efficiencies, or maybe they are using some lighter materials. But the only way they could come up with a number as large as a 55% decrease is by buying supposed carbon offsets and credits. In other words, scams. And they provide no information sufficient to evaluate the legitimacy of how they derive this figure.

There is no real possibility that any of Google, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon or Apple can operate its business without large-scale carbon emissions, at least until there has been a massive build-out of nuclear power that as of now has not even gotten started. Likely these Reports pledging adherence to the carbon neutrality creed are just so many words intended to buy time until the whole climate change mania blows over. When that happens, all these programs will be quietly scrapped. Along the same lines, note this piece from the New York Post today, reporting that Microsoft has just quietly scrapped its DEI program.