The Green Energy Game — ep. 4 — Jeff Bezos & Amazon — 100% Renewable Energy by 2030

Following our mission of helping transform energy consumption into a greener and more sustainable model, today we continue the series aimed to look closely both behind the scenes and on the frontstage of the green energy game. The ins and outs of the energy industry in the renewable sector presented through the lens of the people who run it. The practitioners.

Carbon Emissions & the #ClimateStrike of Amazon Employees

“On Friday, over 1,500 Amazon workers plan to walk out of work to protest their company’s environmental impact. It will be the first time in Amazon’s 25-year history that its corporate employees have participated in a walkout demonstration. Employees are calling on Amazon to reduce its carbon footprint as part of a larger, youth-led global climate strike that has planned hundreds of events around the world.”

The September 2019 climate strikes, also known as the Global Week for Future, are a series of international strikes and protests to demand action be taken to address climate change. The strikes’ key dates include 20 September, which is three days before the United Nations Climate Summit, and 27 September, together with the full week from 20 to 27 September proposed for a worldwide general climate strike called the Earth Strike. The protests are taking place across 4,500 locations in 150 countries. The event is a part of the school strike for the climate movement, inspired by Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg.

The #climatestrike is growing up to be the biggest environmental protest in history, as “organizers reported that over 4 million people participated in strikes worldwide, including 1.4 million participants in Germany. An estimated 300,000 protesters took part in Australian strikes, a further 300,000 people joined UK protests and New York protesters numbered roughly 250,000. More than 2,000 scientists in 40 countries pledged to support the strikes.”

Growing on this social context, Amazon employees are calling out their management on reducing the carbon emissions their company has increased with developing worldwide shipping and delivery mechanisms. Although measures of bringing down their carbon footprint have been taken, employees speak up for a more aggressive cut, leading up to zero.

“they want it to stop selling its cloud services to the oil and gas industry; and they want it to stop donating to politicians who deny climate change’s existence.”

Tech employees have risen before against their companies' non-ethical development practices, as the way they do business doesn’t take into account the harm inflicted on the climate through carbon emissions as well as signing deals with major oil companies, or entities that support such trade. As one of them said: “Amazon does not demonstrate the same leadership on climate change that I’m expected to demonstrate every day on the job.”

Jeff Bezos Promises 100% Renewable Energy by 2030

Last week, on the 19th of September, one day before the global climate strike, Bezos informed the media ‘that Amazon would “implement de-carbonization strategies in line with the Paris agreement,” alter its “actual business activities to eliminate carbon” and acquire “credible” carbon offsets with “nature-based solutions.’.

Amazon gets about 40% of its energy from renewable sources with 15 utility-scale solar and wind farms. That will move to 80% by 2024 and 100% by 2030, Bezos said. The company will also purchase 100,000 electric delivery vans from Michigan-based start-up Rivian, he said. Currently, all of Amazon’s vans burn fossil fuels. Amazon has invested $400 million in Rivian, which also has backing from Ford.

Bezos’ statement comes right before the global strike, promising to make sure the carbon emissions will be reduced to a minimum while adopting 100% renewable energy by the year 2030. Large corporations are now put in the position to align to cultural paradigm changes such as fighting against global warming and making their policies environmental friendly and contributing to a worldwide more sustainable future and way of doing business.

“Amazon said it would commit another $100 million to reforestation projects through the Right Now Climate Fund in partnership with The Nature Conservancy. That fund will invest in the protection of forests, wetlands and peatlands that now serve as carbon sinks, which remove millions of metric tons of carbon from the atmosphere.

Finally, the company said it will speed up its adoption of renewable energy with the goal of converting 80% of the company’s energy sources to renewable energy by 2024, with the goal of reaching 100% renewable energy use by 2030.”

About Jeff Bezos & Amazon.com

If you ever bought something online, it is most likely an Amazon link turned up in your search. The e-commerce giant was started by Jeff Bezos and a couple of his friends in a garage in Seattle. A computer science graduate, Bezos wanted to create a virtual bookstore. After coming up with the software behind it all, Amazon.com sold its first book in July 1995.

Since then it has seen enormous growth and expanded its product lines from books to basically anything you can think of. Ensuring worldwide delivery, the retail giant expanded all around the globe and has no intention of stopping yet. Although he is known to have started his business empire in online retail, Jeff Bezos always thought of his company as a technology one.

In the years to come, we will probably see an even larger socio-economic transformation in the adoption of renewable energy sources. The planet’s population is expanding and so is our digital society’s needs. Individuals are becoming more and more focused on improving the world they live in, and so should larger corporations. We are all in this together, a larger global family looking towards a brighter and more sustainable future.

Through this series, we aim to look closely at both behind the scenes and on the frontstage of the green energy game. The ins and outs of the energy industry in the renewable sector presented through the lens of the people who run it. The practitioners.

About Restart Energy
Restart Energy Democracy (RED) is a blockchain-powered platform, backed by Restart Energy — a European energy provider with 20 million USD in revenues. The company was built with a vision to democratize the energy sector and quash the dominance of legacy monopolies in the energy world. The company’s credentials include a customer base of 27,000 households and 3,000 corporate clients, expanding at more than 2,000 clients per month, and it’s impressive growth: 1700% from 2015 until today.
Restart Energy is developing the world’s first peer-to-peer, fully decentralized energy transfer platform allowing users to send and receive energy worldwide, based on its proprietary virtual balancing system, that uses A.I, Big Data, and IoT technologies. The RED ecosystem is comprised of the RED-Platform, RED-Franchise and RED-MWAT Tokens.

For more information, please visit our website, our Telegram, and read the Restart Energy whitepaper. Join our announcement channel for updates regarding Restart Energy Democracy.