Amazon rebuffs AWS climate request

Amazon just told shareholders not to ask harder questions about whether its Amazon Web Services building spree can fit inside its climate promises. The request is on the ballot for Amazon’s 2026 annual meeting, and Amazon’s board recommends voting against it. (theregister.com) (sec.gov) The shareholder proposal is narrow. It asks Amazon for a report explaining how it can still meet its greenhouse-gas commitments while artificial-intelligence demand pushes it to build many more data centers. (asyousow.org) (sec.gov) Amazon’s public promise is also narrow enough to test. The company says it wants net-zero carbon emissions across its operations by 2040, and it says 100 percent of the electricity it consumed was matched with renewable energy in 2024 for the second straight year. (aboutamazon.com) The tension sits inside Amazon Web Services, which is the company’s cloud-computing arm and one of its main profit engines. Data centers are giant warehouses full of servers, and every new server hall needs electricity, cooling equipment, steel, concrete, and backup power. (theregister.com) (asyousow.org) Chief executive Andy Jassy told investors Amazon added 3.9 gigawatts of compute capacity during 2025 and expects to double that by the end of 2027. Amazon also said it expects about $200 billion in capital spending in 2026, with most of that tied to Amazon Web Services and artificial-intelligence infrastructure. (theregister.com) (datacenterdynamics.com) (cnbc.com) That growth collides with the calendar. Amazon says small modular nuclear reactors are part of its energy plan, but the shareholder filing notes those projects are not expected to deliver power until the early 2030s, while the data-center buildout is happening now. (asyousow.org) The proposal also goes after a bookkeeping issue that sounds boring until you picture the grid as a bathtub. Amazon says it “matches” its electricity use with renewable energy, but critics want to know whether buying more renewable-energy credits still works if local utilities are adding gas plants or delaying coal retirements to serve data centers. (aboutamazon.com) (asyousow.org) Amazon’s own 2024 sustainability report shows why investors keep pressing. The company said indirect emissions from other sources were 74 percent of its total carbon footprint in 2024, and those emissions rose 6 percent from 2023, primarily because of data-center construction and fuel used by third-party delivery providers. (aboutamazon.com) This is not Amazon’s first fight over the gap between artificial-intelligence growth and climate math. The Securities and Exchange Commission let a similar 2025 proposal go to a vote after Amazon argued it could leave it out, which helped turn this year’s filing into a more direct test of how much extra disclosure shareholders can force. (sec.gov) So the vote is really about one sentence investors want Amazon to answer in detail: if the company’s fastest-growing business needs far more power before cleaner power arrives, what fills the gap. Amazon is asking shareholders to trust its existing reports instead of making it spell that out project by project. (theregister.com) (ezodproxy.com)