recently recorded emissions hikes<\/a>, driven by data center construction and operations. While most power company executives agree that solar-plus-batteries is the fastest and cheapest form of new generation to build, tech firms still seem to harbor some anxiety about renewables being able to provide enough juice \u2014 and in many cases, are simply locked in to whatever power plants already exist on the grid in a given location. In Amazon\u2019s case, emissions from purchased electricity jumped 34% year-on-year in 2025. For now, there\u2019s simply not enough clean power available, Hurst said, because of the familiar litany of bottlenecks with permitting and grid interconnection.<\/p>\n\u201cPower availability is a challenge right now,\u201d she said. \u201cSo is grid modernization, and so are a number of other things in the US, but we\u2019re working on all of these issues.\u201d<\/p>\n
Power is only part of the problem. The company also reported a 20% bump in its supply chain emissions, which account for three-quarters of its total carbon footprint. In particular, data center construction materials have become a big problem, Hurst said, and the company is stepping up its investment in lower-carbon steel and concrete. It\u2019s also still battling to get its sprawling network of global suppliers to agree and implement their own carbon-cutting plans.<\/p>\n
In the meantime, Hurst is looking forward to \u201ccatalytic\u201d energy tech breakthroughs, such as advanced small-scale nuclear, to break the data center emissions pattern. Any plan that relies on nuclear energy breakthroughs on a tight timeline carries plenty of risk. But Hurst remains confident about hitting net zero on time. \u201c2040 is a really ambitious goal, but we are absolutely gunning towards it,\u201d she said. \u201cI don\u2019t see any alternative to that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Amazon\u2019s new sustainability stats are the latest signal that Big Tech hasn\u2019t yet figured out how to reconcile…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":521942,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[242,85,46,141],"class_list":["post-521941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=521941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521941\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/521942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=521941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=521941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}