After a dozen years operating data centers in eastern Oregon, Amazon says it has a deal to buy renewable energy to help power them.
The Seattle company announced Tuesday it has begun working with the local power utility, the Umatilla Electric Cooperative, to choose the electricity supply for its huge data center operations near the communities of Boardman and Hermiston. It said that enables the company to choose some renewable power for its installations.
Amazon’s announcement follows reporting by the Oregonian/OregonLive on how the company’s growing footprint in eastern Oregon has contributed to an enormous surge in regional carbon emissions, and an unsuccessful push by climate activists and state lawmakers to require large data centers to transition to clean power.
Amazon says it has been pursuing renewable energy for its Oregon data centers for some time but has only now been able to secure contracts to provide it.
The company says its wholesale power contracts prevent it from saying how much renewable energy it’s buying. So the impact of its new deal with Umatilla Electric won’t be clear until next year, when the utility discloses updated information about its 2023 energy mix to Oregon regulators. (The utility did not respond to questions about its new arrangement with Amazon.)
But Amazon claims its calculations show its Oregon data centers already are “powered with at least 95% renewable energy.” The company maintains that large, clean-energy projects it has built in California and Arizona are compensating for the rapid increase in the carbon impact of its operations near Boardman and Hermiston.
“We’re adding renewable energy to the same grid where we operate,” said Charley Daitch, director of energy and water for Amazon Web Services, the company’s data center business. Though Amazon doesn’t disclose the power sources it uses to arrive at that 95% figure, the company says it uses an outside auditor to verify its claims and it publishes the formula it uses to arrive at its conclusions.
That’s not enough for Joshua Basofin of Climate Solutions Oregon, an environmental advocacy group that helped lead the campaign for Oregon’s clean energy bills. Without more disclosure, he said it’s impossible to evaluate Amazon’s climate claims.
“Amazon has not yet disclosed the methodology it is using to arrive at the 95% statistic or whether credits of some kind are being utilized to claim the benefit of renewable energy generated outside of Oregon for Oregon data centers,” Basofin wrote in an email.
Big data centers like the ones Amazon operates in eastern Oregon use as much power as small cities to power their high-performance computers and keep the machines cool. Most of the data centers in eastern Oregon are exempt from state clean-power requirements state lawmakers approved in 2021, though, because the legislation exempted Umatilla Electric and other consumer-owned utilities from the bill’s major provisions.
Amazon, like other large tech companies, says it accepts the science that shows human activity is warming the planet. The company has pledged “to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2040.”
Amazon is beginning negotiations with officials in Morrow County on plans for as many as six more data centers that would cost $12 billion. Amazon wants a new package of tax breaks to exempt a portion of the construction from local property taxes.
This past week’s comments mark the first time Amazon has publicly discussed the climate impact of its Oregon operations in any detail. The company declined comment on the energy impact of its Oregon data centers last year, and though it lobbied state lawmakers against the climate bill, it did not comment about the legislation publicly until after it died in committee last week.
In a statement, Amazon said it wants to work with Oregon leaders to enable more renewable energy development in the state.
“Accelerating energy infrastructure permitting and interconnections for renewables like solar and wind would have a greater impact on reducing emissions, bringing more clean energy to the grid, and helping achieve our goal of accessing more clean energy in Oregon,” the company said.
In the meantime, Amazon is planning to install fuel cells powered by natural gas — a major contributor to climate change — to help power its data centers in eastern Oregon. Daitch described the fuel cells as a temporary measure to overcome constraints in the region’s electrical grid.
“We really do view it as a bridge to a longer-term capacity solution in the region that includes additional transmission and renewable energy investments,” he said.
Amazon said it will pursue renewable natural gas or other energy sources with a lower carbon footprint to power the fuel cells. For now, it plans to tap into a controversial pipeline bringing natural gas from British Columbia.
In a new filing with state regulators, Bloom Energy, the company providing Amazon’s fuel cells, says the fuel cells would add 24 megawatts of electricity to a Morrow County data center that currently has just 40 megawatts of power available.
There are 2,500 megawatts of renewable energy waiting to come online in the region, according to Bloom, but a transmission bottleneck will constrain access to that power for “several years.” One key transmission line to Boardman is at least three years away from starting construction, according to Bloom, and will take at least four years to build.
Basofin said Oregon law requires Amazon to demonstrate that it has assessed alternative power sources with lower carbon footprints before installing the fuel cells. He said Bloom’s filing fails to show Amazon has done that.
“It appears they failed to give thorough consideration to developing or investing in renewable energy,” Basofin said, “as other tech companies have done in Oregon, and Amazon itself has done in Virginia.”
-- Mike Rogoway | mrogoway@oregonian.com | 503-294-7699 Our journalism needs your support. Please become a subscriber today at OregonLive.com/subscribe