Green America Calls on Amazon Web Services to "Build a Cleaner Cloud"

WASHINGTON, June 9, 2015 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Green America today launched "Amazon: Build a Cleaner Cloud" (www.BuildACleanerCloud.org), a campaign to push the nation's largest cloud-based computing service to shift to clean energy sources for its servers by 2020.  In its focus on climate change and low-carbon energy use, Amazon lags behind most companies – including Apple, Google, and Facebook – that operate large-scale data centers.

Amazon.com's Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the single largest provider of cloud computing services, and is host to companies such as Netflix, Pinterest, the Wall Street Journal, and many more.  Widely seen as a laggard on clean energy and climate action, Amazon is one of the few Fortune 500 companies that fails to produce an annual sustainability report and does not report out to the Carbon Disclosure Project.

Green America's Campaigns Director Elizabeth O'Connell said: "Every day, tens of millions of consumers are watching movies, reading news articles, and posting to social media sites that all use Amazon Web Services.  What they don't realize is that by using Amazon Web Services they are contributing to climate change.  Amazon needs to take action now to increase its use of renewables to 100 percent by 2020, so that consumers won't have to choose between using the internet and protecting the planet."

Green America's Executive Co-Director Todd Larsen said:  "Amazon lags behind its competitors, such as Google and Microsoft, in using renewable energy for its cloud-based computer servers.  Unlike most of its competitors, it also fails to publish a corporate responsibility or sustainability reporting, and it fails to disclose its emissions and impacts to the Carbon Disclosure Project.  While it is clear that Amazon's climate emissions and overall environmental impacts are huge, the public has no way of knowing just how large they are or Amazon's plans for reducing them.  We are calling on Amazon.com to take steps to be transparent about its emissions and to rapidly move to renewable energy."

Green America's campaign is calling on Amazon.com to do the following:

1. Commit to increasing the share of renewable energy powering data centers to 100 percent by 2020, and cease the construction of new data centers that rely on coal-fired power.
2. Submit complete and accurate data to the Carbon Disclosure Project.
3. Issue an annual sustainability report following Global Reporting Initiative Guidelines.

Green America's campaign is launching the day before Amazon's Annual General Meeting in Seattle where shareholders are once again asking the company to issue a sustainability report.  In addition the campaign follows the release of Greenpeace's latest Clicking Clean report that rates Amazon Web Services poorly for its lack of transparency and for trailing competitors in adopting clean energy sources for its servers.

ABOUT GREEN AMERICA
Green America (www.GreenAmerica.org) works to harness economic power – the strength of consumers, investors, businesses, and the marketplace – to create a socially just and environmentally sustainable society. For more than thirty years, Green America has been organizing to stop abusive economic practices and to create healthy, just and sustainable practices. Green America's Green Business Network (www.GreenBusinessNetwork.org) is the first, largest, and most diverse network of socially and environmentally responsible businesses in the country.

SOURCE Green America, Washington, DC

Related Links

http://www.greenamerica.org