Amazon Web Services will install lower-emission backup generators at its new data center sites. The commitment is one of several the company announced on 2 October under a program it calls Built Together, which promises more than $1 billion over five years for the U.S. communities that host its data centers, GeekWire reported.
The money is meant for free community college, job training, energy upgrades for homes and schools, and local projects chosen by those communities. Alongside it, Amazon says it will stop signing non-disclosure agreements with government agencies on new data center projects, publish its energy and water use every year and pay enough for its power to keep local electricity bills from rising.
A Response to Local Opposition
AWS chief executive Matt Garman presented the program as an answer to growing resistance. He wrote that more than 100 data center moratoriums are under consideration across the U.S. and argued that they could cost the country its position in AI. GeekWire cites Data Center Watch, which counted at least 75 projects worth about $130 billion blocked or delayed in the first quarter alone, and an Economist/YouGov poll from late August in which 63 % of Americans said they would oppose a data center in their community.
Garman rejected several common claims about data centers, among them that their backup generators emit large amounts of pollution. He wrote that the generators sit idle 99.9 % of the time. He also blamed part of the opposition on foreign misinformation; PolitiFact reported last month that this role has been exaggerated.
What Lower Emissions Could Mean
Amazon has not said what "lower-emission" means in practice. The usual routes are known: engines certified to a newer emission stage, exhaust aftertreatment such as SCR and particulate filters, and renewable fuels such as HVO, the main fuel planned for the generators at its newly approved site at Iver in the UK. Each has its own consequences for space, maintenance and how the generators are tested.
The figure of 99.9 % idle time is also a reminder of when neighbours actually notice a generator yard: during the regular test runs and maintenance, when the units start, warm up and run under load. Exhaust plumes and noise during those hours are what local objections usually point to, and that is where a lower-emission promise will be judged.
Sources: GeekWire, Taipei Times