Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday joined other Republican state attorneys general to investigate big tech companies regarding their allegedly deceptive claims that they are powered in large part by renewable energy.
“Big Tech is in our homes and hands every single day, so we must hold them to the highest standard of transparency and truth,” Sunday said. “What we have found is that Big Tech is making false claims of being ‘green.’ These false claims neglect natural power resources, including coal and gas resources that are power and economic drivers across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.”
Pennsylvania is the second-largest producer of natural gas after Texas. It also has ample coal deposits and is the third-largest coal-producing state, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Sunday, and the other attorneys general sent a letter to Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Meta demanding answers. The letter claims the companies’ claims about purchased certificates to offset emissions are deceptive for consumers because purchasing credits does not reduce their own or any emissions. The states’ top law enforcement officers are also concerned that these tech giants are pressuring utilities to move away from fossil fuels to less reliable renewable sources, which would destabilize the power grids across America.
The corporations’ claims appear deceptive given the increasing electricity demands of those companies and the realities of the U.S. electrical grid, which consists of 60 percent fossil fuels. To make these claims, companies engage in a shell game whereby they purchase unbundled ‘renewable energy certificates’ (RECs) and then claim the ‘renewable’ attribute of energy that is used by someone else as their own energy usage.”
“We are also concerned that the unrealistic claim of 100 percent renewable energy contributes to the present grid-reliability crisis,” the letter said. “The Department of Energy estimates that if we do not change course, blackouts will increase by 100 times by 2030. Tech companies have not only created skyrocketing demand for electricity but also locked up relatively rare baseload sources like nuclear power for themselves, while pushing utilities towards harmful net-zero goals that require greater reliance on intermittent renewable power sources for everyone else.”
The heavily footnoted letter also said that commitments by these tech companies are “leading to deals that could lock consumers out of reliable energy.”
“According to the Institute for Energy Research, tech companies are committing to buy most, or all, of the electricity directly produced at existing nuclear plants in some areas of the country.” By hooking data centers directly to nuclear plants, those data centers could potentially run on 100 percent renewable power. But instead of adding new green energy to meet their soaring power needs, tech companies would be effectively diverting existing electricity resources.’ These deals could sap the grid of critical resources at a time when blackouts are rapidly increasing around the country. Solar and wind are not reliable forms of renewable energy—and overreliance on these sources of power will lead to an even greater increase in blackouts like the one recently experienced in Spain.”
The attorneys general noted that, before the blackout, 80 percent of Spain’s grid was powered by renewables. Afterward, that country “quietly” began to add more natural gas to stabilize its power grid.
Also, they noted tech companies’ AI products and data centers are creating unprecedented demand for power, putting pressure on utility companies to boost their renewables to keep those behemoth clients happy.
An Amazon spokesperson said the company is reviewing the letter.
It states that it has achieved its 100 percent renewable energy goal seven years ahead of schedule. It invested in more than 600 renewable energy projects around the world. It can take several years for the projects we invest in to come online, so they sometimes use “unbundled Renewable Energy Certificates—a fundamental part of the global renewable energy market—to temporarily bridge the gap to a project’s operational date. The number of unbundled RECs we use will continue to decrease over time as more projects come online.”
Amazon “co-founded the Emissions First Partnership, a coalition of energy purchasers focused on encouraging renewable energy investments in regions with grids that are primarily fueled by fossil fuel energy sources.”
It also supports modernizing the grid by removing permitting obstacles and promoting grid-enhancing technologies, the company spokesperson said.
Spokespeople for Meta and Google did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Microsoft declined to comment.
In the letter, the attorneys general sent the tech companies 21 questions demanding answers by Oct. 27. The letter is led by Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen. Sunday and attorneys general from Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, West Virginia, and Wyoming also joined.