Why Amazon quashed an Oregon bill that aimed to curb data center emissions

Published

2 years ago

April 6, 2023

admin

On what was recently farmland, Amazon data centers have been built as close as 50 feet from residential houses in the Loudoun Meadows neighborhood on January 20, 2023, in Aldie, VA.

Jahi Chikwendiu | The Washington Post | Getty Images

In January, Oregon lawmakers submitted a bill to the state’s legislature that sought to curb the carbon output of new data centers and cryptocurrency miners — facilities that have rapidly sprung up across Oregon due to the relatively low cost of power and favorable tax incentives. It would have required new data center and crypto mining facilities to run entirely on clean energy sources by 2040, in line with the state’s climate targets established in 2021.

On Monday, the bill, known as HB2816, died in a legislative committee. Proponents of the measure are pointing to aggressive lobbying efforts by Amazon, which operates several data centers in the state, as a major culprit behind the bill’s demise.

Amazon’s opposition to the clean energy measure is at odds with its broader push to improve its environmental impact. The company has committed to being carbon neutral by 2040 as part of its Climate Pledge launched in 2019. Amazon says it’s on a path to using 100% renewable energy across its business by 2025, and is the largest corporate buyer of renewable energy.

“From the very first moment we started talking about this bill, Amazon started organizing against it,” said Oregon state Rep. Pam Marsh, a co-sponsor of HB2816, in an interview.

Representatives from Oxley & Associates, a lobbying firm hired by Amazon, were spotted in the halls of the capitol building, speaking with members of the state legislature committee who would eventually hear the bill, said Marsh, who is a Democrat representing Oregon’s District 5.

AWS spokesperson David Ward declined to comment on the company’s lobbying efforts related to the bill, but acknowledged Amazon’s opposition to the measure, saying it failed to address the build-out of infrastructure that’s needed to bring more clean energy to the U.S. electricity grid.

“Building new renewable projects requires infrastructure investments in the grid and today there are hurdles in key areas like permitting and interconnection,” Ward said in a statement. “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.”

Experts have said the nation’s out-of-date electrical grid remains a barrier to accelerating the transition to clean energy sources. Today, over 70% of U.S. transmission lines are more than 25 years old, according to the White House. Building new transmission lines is a lengthy and arduous process, as it requires agreement from multiple stakeholders involved, from utility companies and regulators to landowners.

Data centers are extremely energy intensive. In 2014, U.S. data centers consumed an estimated 70 billion kilowatt hours, or about 1.8% of total U.S. electricity consumption in that year, according to the Department of Energy.

Amazon relies on huge server farms to power its sprawling cloud computing service, which is the main profit engine of the company. Amazon has pledged to get all of its data centers running on renewable energy, but it has yet to divest completely from fossil fuels.

On Tuesday, Amazon announced it reached an agreement with Umatilla Electric Cooperative, the utility company serving its operations in Oregon’s Umatilla and Morrow counties, to select the energy supply that powers its data centers, including from renewable sources.

Changes to the bill did not appease Amazon, says Marsh

Amazon also argues that lawmakers didn’t engage data center operators and owners in Oregon when they crafted the bill.

But Marsh disputes that contention.

The committee removed a clause that would levy penalties against companies that couldn’t meet the clean energy targets, and added a provision that would let them opt out of the bill. Both actions were an attempt at generating goodwill, Marsh said.

“We said, ‘OK, if it gets to be 2030 and there’s been some major world disruption and you can’t meet your clean energy goals, you can submit this paperwork and you can opt out because something might have happened beyond your control,” Marsh said. “So we made good, strong changes to the bill, but it didn’t change Amazon’s opposition whatsoever.”

Marsh said she became increasingly skeptical of Amazon’s “commitment to clean energy” when it said it planned to power some of its data center operations in the state with natural gas fuel cells made by Bloom Energy.

Amazon said the fuel cells will serve a small portion of its data center operations in the state. The hope is to power the fuel cells with renewable energies like hydrogen or biogas.

Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, a group of Amazon tech workers who have previously pressured the company to address its climate record, said they were disappointed the bill stalled. The group supported the measure, and Sarah Tracy, an AECJ member and former Amazon software developer, testified at a public hearing for the bill.

AECJ created a petition in 2019 to push then-CEO Jeff Bezos to rethink its environmental impact. After Bezos announced the Climate Pledge, the group still walked out because they felt the pledge wasn’t strong enough. Two employees who were heavily involved in the group, Maren Costa and Emily Cunningham, were fired after they repeatedly spoke out about Amazon’s climate and workplace record. Amazon later settled with Costa and Cunningham after a federal labor agency determined Amazon illegally fired them for their activism.

A spokesperson for AECJ told CNBC, “The level of hypocrisy here would be hilarious if it weren’t so disturbing — naming a sports arena after your ‘Climate Pledge’ for clout while lobbying to bypass the basic clean energy requirements that public utilities are held to. It makes me feel bad for the sustainability team here — they’re working their butts off because they know better than anyone how little time we have to switch Amazon and the rest of the economy to renewables before catastrophe hits. But then the company undercuts that mission by building new dirty energy infrastructure.”

While the bill is dead for now, Marsh said conversations continue around compelling data center and crypto facilities to comply with Oregon’s clean energy targets. The bill may come back in a different form in the future, she added.

Technology

Google hires Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan, others in latest AI talent deal

Published

12 hours ago

July 11, 2025

admin

Google hires Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan, others in latest AI talent deal

Chief executive officer of Google Sundar Pichai.

Marek Antoni Iwanczuk | Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

Google on Friday made the latest a splash in the AI talent wars, announcing an agreement to bring in Varun Mohan, co-founder and CEO of artificial intelligence coding startup Windsurf.

As part of the deal, Google will also hire other senior Windsurf research and development employees. Google is not investing in Windsurf, but the search giant will take a nonexclusive license to certain Windsurf technology, according to a person familiar with the matter. Windsurf remains free to license its technology to others.

“We’re excited to welcome some top AI coding talent from Windsurf’s team to Google DeepMind to advance our work in agentic coding,” a Google spokesperson wrote in an email. “We’re excited to continue bringing the benefits of Gemini to software developers everywhere.”

The deal between Google and Windsurf comes after the AI coding startup had been in talks with OpenAI for a $3 billion acquisition deal, CNBC reported in April. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The move ratchets up the talent war in AI particularly among prominent companies. Meta has made lucrative job offers to several employees at OpenAI in recent weeks. Most notably, the Facebook parent added Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang to lead its AI strategy as part of a $14.3 billion investment into his startup.

Douglas Chen, another Windsurf co-founder, will be among those joining Google in the deal, Jeff Wang, the startup’s new interim CEO and its head of business for the past two years, wrote in a post on X.

“Most of Windsurf’s world-class team will continue to build the Windsurf product with the goal of maximizing its impact in the enterprise,” Wang wrote.

Windsurf has become more popular this year as an option for so-called vibe coding, which is the process of using new age AI tools to write code. Developers and non-developers have embraced the concept, leading to more revenue for Windsurf and competitors, such as Cursor, which OpenAI also looked at buying. All the interest has led investors to assign higher valuations to the startups.

This isn’t the first time Google has hired select people out of a startup. It did the same with Character.AI last summer. Amazon and Microsoft have also absorbed AI talent in this fashion, with the Adept and Inflection deals, respectively.

Microsoft is pushing an agent mode in its Visual Studio Code editor for vibe coding. In April, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said AI is composing as much of 30% of his company’s code.

The Verge reported the Google-Windsurf deal earlier on Friday.

WATCH: Google pushes “AI Mode” on homepage

Technology

Nvidia’s Jensen Huang sells more than $36 million in stock, catches Warren Buffett in net worth

Published

20 hours ago

July 11, 2025

admin

Nvidia's Jensen Huang sells more than million in stock, catches Warren Buffett in net worth

Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, holds a motherboard as he speaks during the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris, France, on June 11, 2025.

Gonzalo Fuentes | Reuters

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang unloaded roughly $36.4 million worth of stock in the leading artificial intelligence chipmaker, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

The sale, which totals 225,000 shares, comes as part of Huang’s previously adopted plan in March to unload up to 6 million shares of Nvidia through the end of the year. He sold his first batch of stock from the agreement in June, equaling about $15 million.

Last year, the tech executive sold about $700 million worth of shares as part of a prearranged plan. Nvidia stock climbed about 1% Friday.

Huang’s net worth has skyrocketed as investors bet on Nvidia’s AI dominance and graphics processing units powering large language models.

The 62-year-old’s wealth has grown by more than a quarter, or about $29 billion, since the start of 2025 alone, based on Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index. His net worth last stood at $143 billion in the index, putting him neck-and-neck with Berkshire Hathaway‘s Warren Buffett at $144 billion.

Shortly after the market opened Friday, Fortune‘s analysis of net worth had Huang ahead of Buffett, with the Nvidia CEO at $143.7 billion and the Oracle of Omaha at $142.1 billion.

Tesla to officially launch in India with planned showroom opening

Published

23 hours ago

July 11, 2025

admin

Tesla to officially launch in India with planned showroom opening

Elon Musk meets with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Blair House in Washington DC, USA on February 13, 2025.

Anadolu | Anadolu | Getty Images

Tesla will open a showroom in Mumbai, India next week, marking the U.S. electric carmakers first official foray into the country.

The one and a half hour launch event for the Tesla “Experience Center” will take place on July 15 at the Maker Maxity Mall in Bandra Kurla Complex in Mumbai, according to an event invitation seen by CNBC.

Along with the showroom display, which will feature the company’s cars, Tesla is also likely to officially launch direct sales to Indian customers.

The automaker has had its eye on India for a while and now appears to have stepped up efforts to launch locally.

In April, Tesla boss Elon Musk spoke with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to discuss collaboration in areas including technology and innovation. That same month, the EV-maker’s finance chief said the company has been “very careful” in trying to figure out when to enter the market.

Tesla has no manufacturing operations in India, even though the country’s government is likely keen for the company to establish a factory. Instead the cars sold in India will need to be imported from Tesla’s other manufacturing locations in places like Shanghai, China, and Berlin, Germany.

As Tesla begins sales in India, it will come up against challenges from long-time Chinese rival BYD, as well as local player Tata Motors.

One potential challenge for Tesla comes by way of India’s import duties on electric vehicles, which stand at around 70%. India has tried to entice investment in the country by offering companies a reduced duty of 15% if they commit to invest $500 million and set up manufacturing locally.

HD Kumaraswamy, India’s minister for heavy industries, told reporters in June that Tesla is “not interested” in manufacturing in the country, according to a Reuters report.

Tesla is looking to recruit roles in Mumbai, job listings posted on LinkedIn . These include advisors working in showrooms, security, vehicle operators to collect data for its Autopilot feature and service technicians.

There are also roles being advertised in the Indian capital of New Delhi, including for store managers. It’s unclear if Tesla is planning to launch a showroom in the city.