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Ohio Denies Evidence of Fracking Waste in Drinking Water. Its Own Records Show Otherwise.
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Article by Justin Nobel republished from DeSmog.
$Outline of the state of Ohio, filled red, with the locations of Columbus, Coshocton, and Marietta in central, eastern and southeastern parts. The graphic of Ohio has valves and pipes of a fracking wastewater injection well pumping waste into the state. A vintage 1900s era map surrounds Ohio.$
The influx of oil and gas wastewater into Ohio is placing new pressure on the state. Credit: Sari Williams/DeSmog
This story was co-published with Rolling Stone.
In Ohio’s rural southeastern corner, Marietta College geology professor David Jeffrey was among the residents worried that industry activity in America’s booming natural gas region could be polluting their drinking water. That’s “the biggest fear,” he said at an August meeting with top Ohio officials.
When Jeffrey and residents from advocacy groups Buckeye Environmental Network and Washington County for Safe Drinking Water met with Ohio officials, those state officials repeatedly assured residents that despite the up to 1.4 billion gallons of oil and gas wastewater injected in underground wells in their county and across Ohio each year, the state was unaware of any resulting drinking water contamination there.
“We would have heard about it,” Mary Mertz, director of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR), which oversees both aspects of Ohio’s environment and its oil and gas industry, told residents in the August 17 virtual meeting.
“No one has called us that I’m aware of,” said Eric Vendel, ODNR’s oil and gas division chief. “We have a water investigation form that can be filled out and we would have my team down there and investigate the water.”
What officials did not tell the group that day is that five years earlier, the state did receive a call and, on Vendel’s orders, investigated a drinking water well for oil and gas wastewater contaminants in eastern Ohio, roughly 80 miles away from Washington County. Independent experts say the results are consistent with fracking wastewater contamination. Despite that and the water well’s location near two oil and gas wastewater injection wells, ODNR concluded fracking wastewater was not to blame, according to documents DeSmog and Rolling Stone obtained via public records request.
ODNR spokesperson Andy Chow told DeSmog and Rolling Stone: “When administrators were meeting with representatives in Washington County, they were discussing matters related to injection wells located in Washington County. ODNR stands by the comments made by its administrators.”
Concerns over polluted drinking water cross political and social divides, perhaps nowhere more so than rural Washington County. As intensely salty wastewater pushed below ground resurfaces, residents and officials have injected the issue into the already bitterly divided Ohio governor’s race. Susan Vessels, a Republican official in Washington County, recently appeared alongside Democratic gubernatorial candidate Dr. Amy Acton because of Acton’s pledge to pause new wastewater wells in this densely drilled area. “We have a chance to prevent the worst from happening, and we need to act now,” Acton told DeSmog and Rolling Stone.
“Drinking water is not political and it is my hope Ohioans will come together across party lines on this issue.”Susan Vessels, Marietta City Council President
Ohio ranks in the top 10 nationally for both oil and gas production. Fracking can occur within 100 feet of a school or rural home, and operators have been able to tap the gas-rich Marcellus and Utica formations by drilling directly beneath water reservoirs and state parks. But in order to maintain that production, the industry has to offload the tidal wave of toxic wastewater — rich in salts, carcinogens, heavy metals, and radioactive elements — that surfaces in the weeks and years that follow drilling an oil or gas well.
That wastewater gets pumped into injection wells deep below ground, where impermeable geological layers are supposed to keep it from leaking into oil and gas wells or drinking water supplies. Washington County, whose 19 injection wells outnumber all of Pennsylvania, has received complaints of this wastewater, or brine, flooding nearby oil and gas wells, according to the New York Times.
Now, an hour and a half drive north, in the town of Coshocton, Ohio, records show evidence of a family’s drinking water polluted by high levels of the same types of salts found in fracking wastewater.
“This is different”
In early November 2021, Bill Burgan, an eastern Ohio water well driller, called ODNR to complain about water from a 360-foot well he had drilled in 2017 for the Fisher family in Coshocton, according to ODNR documents. At the beginning of 2021, their water had become salty and corrosive. Not only did it leave a salty taste in the mouth, but it caused their hot water tanks to rust out prematurely. The couple had replaced two tanks in four years. Within weeks, the newest one became coated in an unidentifiable white precipitate.
“Sometimes we drill through pockets of salt,” said Burgan, president of American Drilling and Pump Service, in an interview with DeSmog and Rolling Stone this summer outside his Stone Creek, Ohio, shop. “But this is different, it’s fracking waste.”
Burgan told DeSmog and Rolling Stone, and, separately, ODNR according to public records, that he expressed concern that the Fishers’ drinking water well became impacted by an oil and gas wastewater injection well located less than two miles from the family’s home and operated by a Texas-based company called Buckeye Brine. The local community vigorously opposed Buckeye Brine’s installment of the injection well, where since 2014 the company has injected over 400 million gallons of waste.
After receiving Burgan’s complaint, ODNR swiftly launched an investigation that agency geologist Tamara Richards said “will focus solely on contaminants associated with oil and natural gas exploration and production,” according to public records.

The state’s results indicate signatures of possible drinking water pollution from oil and gas wastewater, according to independent experts who reviewed the findings. Ohio’s final report on the incident, completed in January 2022, found two separate indicators of potential fracking wastewater contamination — total dissolved solids, and chloride — in the Fisher family’s water. Both tested at more than five times the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) limits. ODNR also tested for sodium, which lacks a formal EPA limit but has a threshold, as high levels can cause unpleasant taste and health problems for diabetics. In the Fishers’ water, sodium was 17 times the EPA threshold.
According to Jeffrey, the Marietta College geologist, high levels of total dissolved solids, chloride, and sodium also are found in the sea of fracking wastewater pumped into injection wells like the one operated by Buckeye Brine.
However, ODNR concluded there was “no evidence of an oilfield related impact” and pinned the cause of the contamination on a sandstone layer called the “Big Injun” that the agency, without providing any data, stated “appears to be” naturally salty and surrounded part of the family’s water well.
But Jeffrey said testing done by the state did not look at enough parameters to determine that the contamination was natural and not from fracking wastewater. “It seems ODNR is either stonewalling, misdirecting, or just doesn’t know what they are doing,” he told DeSmog and Rolling Stone.
In a separate case that would unfold over a year after ODNR tested the Fishers’ water, the agency was considering whether leaking injection wells or else the “Big Injun” sandstone formation might be contaminating conventional oil and gas wells in Athens County, just west of Washington County. This time, ODNR concluded the impacts “cannot be plausibly explained” by the sandstone formation due to its unique brine signature, citing a “June 2, 2020 technical analysis prepared by ALL Consulting.” The agency added that impacts from this natural layer would have been consistent from the start, and “it is unlikely” they would have appeared only after the injection well operator began working. ODNR ultimately suspended the permit for a set of three injection wells that were eventually shut in for leaking fracking wastewater. ODNR has not yet replied to questions regarding this case.

When asked about the state’s findings in Coshocton and their scientific evidence, Burgan was dismissive. “They are covering it up,” he said, “because they are making too much money off of this.”
Oil and gas companies pay Ohio five cents a barrel to dispose of in-state wastewater, and 20 cents for wastewater imported from other states. Much of the waste injected comes from neighboring West Virginia and Pennsylvania. With at least a billion gallons of waste injected every year, that income translates to an average of $2.4 million annually for state coffers, according to state documents.
“The ODNR Division of Oil and Gas Resources Management uses evidence and facts, testing, and the latest technologies to evaluate complaints of brine migration” and “stands by the results of its investigation,” said ODNR spokesperson Chow.
The entrance to Buckeye Brine’s injection well facility in Coshocton, Ohio. Credit: Justin Nobel/DeSmog
But ODNR did not investigate the Buckeye Brine injection well, subject of the original complaint, or any other injection wells. It did investigate “producing oil and gas wells within a one-half mile radius” of the family’s home.
After Burgan’s company reached out, we “contacted ODNR and ODNR was not interested in any further efforts on the matter,” said Susie Patterson, the manager at Buckeye Brine, by email. Patterson said groundwater monitoring wells installed in 2019 and sampled quarterly showed “no indication of contamination by oilfield substances,” or that “the water was not fit for consumption due to contaminants,” and pinned issues with the Fishers’ well on the water well driller.
“The wells were drilled much deeper than surrounding wells producing good drinking water,” said Patterson. “It is Buckeye’s opinion that the driller was trying to justify to the well owner the bad wells.”
The Fishers declined to participate in the story.
The Oil and Gas Industry’s Trillion-Gallon Problem
Across America, over one trillion gallons of oil and gas wastewater are generated every year — enough to fill a line of waste barrels to the moon and back 28 times. Nearly all of this waste — 96 percent — will be injected deep into the earth at disposal injection wells.
Given the oil and gas industry’s reliance on injection wells as a critical means of disposal for a dangerous waste stream, analysts have referred to injection wells as a linchpin to the sound operation of the entire oil and gas industry. Disposal of oil and gas wastewater is the industry’s “Achilles’ heel,” said Ted Auch, a researcher at the oil and gas industry watchdog Fieldnotes. A 2021 Rice University Center for Energy Studies report stated that if the industry did not have injection wells to rely on for waste disposal, the “resulting economic impacts would be profound — and likely, existential.”
The United States has more than 181,400 oil and gas wastewater injection wells, but as industry leaders testified at the Texas state capitol in August, lack of space to store this toxic brine already is threatening to curtain oil and gas production in Texas’ productive Permian Basin. Even where it has been stored, increasing evidence shows the wastewater is not always staying put.
Injection has proven particularly problematic in Ohio, where state regulators have halted operations at over half a dozen injection wells, citing concerns that fracking wastewater has leaked and has traveled up to five miles underground to contaminate conventional oil and gas wells. ODNR noted in a 2023 letter to DeepRock Disposal Solutions, a southeast Ohio company formerly run by the chair of the state senate’s energy committee, that such incidents pose a risk to public health and drinking water too.
In Texas, wastewater shot down injection wells has burst back to the surface at old oil and gas wells, at times generating 100-foot geysers of brine in the desert, and Inside Climate News reported that oilfield waste has contaminated drinking water sources in the heart of West Texas oil country. Reporting by ProPublica revealed the situation is similar in neighboring Oklahoma, where regulators have clashed over how far to rein in the injection industry, despite state evidence showing drinking water sources polluted with contaminants consistent with oilfield waste.

Independent scientists raise the question of whether other oil and gas states may be facing similar problems.
“We have always been concerned as environmental scientists and geologists in this area that there is no underground containment in these [injection] wells,” said Jen Bowman, a water chemistry expert and the director of environmental programs at Ohio University, in Athens. “What so many folks in this area don’t understand, our underground layers are just rock layers so there is no magic underground lake where you are getting water from, and there is no magic underground storage container where the waste is going.” Injecting millions of gallons of waste at high pressure means contamination miles from the site of injection is inevitable, she said.
“This is not a good plan or disposal mechanism for potentially dangerous materials,” Bowman told DeSmog and Rolling Stone, “especially given that people rely on groundwater in so much of rural Ohio.”
The concern about drinking water in Washington County is exactly what motivates Susan Vessels, the Republican president of the Marietta City Council. She has led the council in writing a resolution, passed last October, urging Ohio state legislators to introduce legislation imposing a three-year moratorium on new wastewater injection wells in Washington County. More recently she has crossed the political aisle when Amy Acton, the former state health director, came to Marietta last month as part of her gubernatorial campaign. Acton supports Vessels’ proposed moratorium and is facing an ugly, expensive race against billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy.
Acton told DeSmog and Rolling Stone that the fight over injection wells and drinking water contamination comes down to ensuring a better future for Marietta and all of Ohio.
“That is why I am committing to a three-year moratorium on wastewater injection wells in Washington County,” said Acton. “I’m fighting against the corruption in our Statehouse and the cost of that corruption that we pay for. We must act to protect our resources and our drinking water.” Ramaswamy’s campaign has not replied to questions.
“Drinking water is not political,” said Vessels, “and it is my hope Ohioans will come together across party lines on this issue.”
In an op-ed, she took to task the GOP contender Ramaswamy, who called people “whiners” for raising concerns about clean water, energy use, and other issues as proposals for AI data centers arrive in Ohio.
“I think they are full of shit, and that is point-blank my opinion.”Phillip Johnson, Washington County water well driller
Washington County water well driller Phillip Johnson said he has drilled hundreds of private water wells in the region. He disagreed with the state’s conclusion that brine from the sandstone formation caused the Fisher family well’s contamination.
“I think they are full of shit, and that is point-blank my opinion,” he said.
Johnson said that if the sandstone formation was the cause of the salt contamination in the Fishers’ drinking water, then the salty taste should have been there from the beginning, and not strengthened over time as the couple reported, according to ODNR documents.
“Just because you drill 1,000 wells and everything works fine, it just takes one well to not work right for there to be a problem,” said Johnson. “It is nature, if you pump something down under pressure, the path of least resistance is up.”
“I am all for drilling oil and gas,” he added, “but fresh natural water is the most essential natural resource there is, in this country, the state, anywhere in the world, and if you contaminate it, you essentially ruin everything.”
Dominic DiGiulio, a retired EPA scientist with a doctorate in geoscience and decades of experience investigating the movement of underground fluids, provided another assessment of the state’s conclusions in the Coshocton case.
“The ODNR’s logic for stating that the domestic well is partially screened in the Big Injun formation is flawed,” said DiGiulio, who also previously consulted for government agencies and NGOs. “ODNR does not provide compelling evidence.”
Article by Justin Nobel republished from DeSmog.
1 November 2026
School Students Missed 15 Million Teaching Hours Due to June Heatwave
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Article by Clare Carlile and Brigitte Wear republished from DeSmog.
A photo of an empty classroom. Credit: Unsplash (CC0)
Thousands of schools closed their doors, and a third of all pupils were recorded absent in Wales as temperatures hit 37°C.
School pupils in England and Wales lost more than 15 million teaching hours during June’s heatwave, which caused a spike in absences and forced many schools to close their doors or reduce hours over safety concerns.
According to DeSmog’s analysis, at least 760,000 students in the two countries missed lesson time due to school closures. Temperatures broke previous records and parts of the UK reached over 37°C between 23 and 26 June.
Where schools remained open, absences spiked, with absence rates reaching 36.5 percent in Wales on 25 June, the hottest day ever recorded in the country during the month of June.
The heatwave – one of five to batter the UK this summer – lasted for eight days and triggered a red health alert across many parts of the UK, with hospitals forced to cancel operations, workplaces shortening hours, and people warned not to travel. There were nearly 2,900 excess deaths caused by the May and June heatwaves.
The government recommends schools close only as a last resort, when conditions are unsafe. At least 1,730 schools shut their doors or closed early, far more than previously thought, DeSmog’s new analysis showed.
In an email to parents announcing closures, one Oxford school stated: “It reached 30 degrees at 11:30 in some classrooms without children in them”. Other schools reported classroom temperatures over 40°C.
Many other parents opted to remove their children from schools over safety concerns. One parent told DeSmog that she took her five-year-old child out of school after pupils returned home with severe heat rashes.
Where schools remained open, nearly 12 percent of students were absent in England, almost 50 percent higher than the same period in the previous year.
A version of this article was published by The Guardian.
In May, the Climate Change Committee, an independent government advisory body, warned that students would lose an estimated 14 days of learning to extreme heat every year without action to avoid 4°C global warming by the end of the century.
School children in southern England could experience “severe cognitive performance loss for over 80 percent of the spring and summer months,” it said.
Experts told DeSmog that missed school days could come at high costs for school students – from lower exam results to poorer mental health.
Nicola Gray from the University of Huddersfield, who led research into the impact of closures during the Covid-19 pandemic, told DeSmog: “School provides basic social services, social connection, and nutrition [through free school meals]. It provides the qualifications needed for decent housing, a decent job. So much is rooted in the school system.
“We do not want the education and training of our students to dip precisely at the time when they’re gonna need new skills and the best possible futures in a changing climate.”
A spokesperson for the Department for Education (DfE) told DeSmog: “Hot weather can be a struggle, but schools did a fantastic job keeping children learning safely during this summer’s heatwave. Schools put measures in place, so they remained the best place for children to be, even during a heatwave – because every day in school counts.”
The DfE said that it was “investing to make schools more resilient to a changing climate – including through a £710 million Renewal and Retrofit Programme and almost £20 billion to rebuild over 750 schools.”
Spiking Absence Rates
This summer was the UK’s hottest on record, according to provisional data by the Met Office. Extreme heat across Europe and many other parts of the world caused deaths, wildfires, and widespread disruption.
DeSmog collected information on more than 1,700 affected schools based on dozens of national and local news reports, and analysed it using census data to calculate the total number of students impacted by closures.
Neither the government nor local councils currently publish official data on school closures due to extreme weather events. UK councils told DeSmog that schools made individual decisions based on their safeguarding plans.
DeSmog also analysed government data on pupil absences during the heatwave at schools that remained open, which showed a major spike in students missing school time in both England and Wales.
While closures led to over 5.9 million lost learning hours, pupils missed an estimated 9.5 million additional hours due to heat-related absence.
On the hottest day (25 June) in Wales, absence rates were four times the year’s average – and the highest recorded during the year so far – with over a third of all pupils out of school.
Total figures are likely to be a conservative estimate, due to the lack of official data on closures and given government data on absences only covers pupils at state-funded schools up to the age of 15.
Georgia Price*, a mother of two in Sussex, told DeSmog that she decided to keep her son at home rather than sending him to school.
“He spent Tuesday with 30 five-year-olds in one class, with no fan and no ventilation. On Tuesday night, parents on the WhatsApp group were saying that their kids came home with horrendous heat rashes that were remaining overnight,” she said. “He’s not going to be able to learn in an environment like that.”
Deprivation
Closures affected at least 465,000 families, with many more impacted by absences.
Nicola Gray told DeSmog that those on lower incomes would likely be the hardest hit.
“Do students have the internet connection needed for remote learning? Do they have devices? Do they have a private space to work? With the best will in the world, some people may face difficult situations for learning.”
Gloucestershire, Somerset, and Bristol were among the counties worst affected, with 65,000, 48,000, and 46,000 pupils impacted respectively.
Among schools that remained open in England, the highest rate of student absence was seen in the South East, South West, and West Midlands. All three regions saw absence rates reach above 13 percent (double the yearly average).
“School closures can put students in the most deprived areas at a disadvantage,” said Charlotte O’Regan, schools engagement lead at the Sutton Trust, a charity focused on social mobility. “While some schools or parent organisations are able to pay to ensure that their environments are suitable for study, we know that state school leaders are already having to face difficult decisions when it comes to funding.
“We saw a significant widening of the attainment gap during the pandemic, and we have to make sure that the weather doesn’t become yet another barrier holding back those worst off.”
Adaptation
Parents, academics, and campaigners all said that rapid adaptations are needed in schools to keep children safe and able to study in increasing temperatures.
“We should learn from what happened in June,” Georgia Price said. “There are quite simple changes you should make to make it more comfortable. Stagger classes, teach in smaller groups, have portable air-con units.”
Nicola Gray likewise stressed that adaptations were vital for keeping kids in school.
“The best way to have the best life outcomes for our children and young people is for them to be in school. The government could and should have a proactive approach to providing short- and medium-term support,” she said.
Solutions could include changes to school buildings like fitting shutters to keep out the heat, installation of solar panels to power air conditioning and fans, and short-term adaptations like changing school uniform rules and learning in smaller groups, she suggested.
Recent polling commissioned by Global Witness revealed widespread support for such measures. Seventy-five percent of people support the installation of solar-powered air conditioning in schools and hospitals, the polling found.
Unions are also calling for a maximum temperature limit for classrooms such as the one introduced in New York state, which has set a limit of 31°C.
“If you’re not kitted out to make a comfortable environment then you should close,” Price said.
Labour Party chair Bridget Phillipson, who was England’s education secretary during the June heatwave, told Parliament at the time: “We do recognise the need to make sure that as we refurbish and rebuild schools across our country, we make sure that they are well placed to cope with some of the fluctuations in temperature that we’re seeing.”
Phillipson said, however, that in the meantime it was “for school leaders as to how they manage that best”.
*Name changed for anonymity.
Article by Clare Carlile and Brigitte Wear republished from DeSmog.
Donald Trump urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Orcas comment on killer apes destroying the planet by continuing to burn fossil fuels.
15 September 2026
Nigel Farage Made £2.3 Million in Two Years While Serving as Clacton’s MP
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Nigel Farage explains that he’s called another byelection in Clacton-on-Sea because he should be able to secretly enrich himself without scrutiny and accountabilty and that the rules shouldn’t apply to him.
Article by Sam Bright republished from DeSmog.
The Reform leader pocketed major sums from second jobs and donor gifts.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage amassed £2.3 million in income and gifts during his first two years in Parliament, DeSmog can report.
On 7 July, Farage announced that he would be resigning as Clacton’s MP in order to trigger a by-election. The Reform leader has been under investigation by Parliament’s standards commissioner over the £5 million undeclared gift that he accepted from billionaire crypto investor Christopher Harborne, the party’s biggest donor, before the 2024 general election.
DeSmog’s calculations indicate that, during his two years as Clacton’s MP, he accepted more than £2.3 million in external income and gifts, including over £720,000 from the right-wing broadcaster GB News, and more than £770,000 from the metals trading company Gold Bullion. That’s equivalent to £3,151 a day, or £22,000 a week.
Farage’s declaration of interests also shows that he received at least £85,000 in gifts from Harborne, as well as more than £39,000 from convicted fraudster George Cottrell, who also gave undeclared gifts and support to Farage in the year prior to the 2024 election.
The £2.3 million received by Farage has been on top of his roughly £98,000-a-year public salary. DeSmog revealed last week that Farage has only mentioned Clacton twice in Parliament during the past year.
“The government urgently needs to impose tougher limits on MPs’ second jobs,” Kamila Kingstone, a senior campaign lead at Spotlight on Corruption, previously told DeSmog, “so that the public can be confident that their representatives are working in the public interest rather than to line their own pockets.”
Farage’s plan to reset the narrative by forcing a by-election – his attempt to prove that voters are on his side – appears to have backfired. All the major parties have withdrawn from the contest, leaving the Reform leader to fight the by-election against Count Binface, a comedian dressed as a space-travelling bin.
Public concern over the gifts Farage has received from donors also appears to be growing. New polling from YouGov found that 40 percent of Reform’s own voters see Farage as sleazy, matched by 73 percent of the public as a whole.
Public First polling also shows that 44 percent of voters disagree with Farage that he is a victim of the political establishment, compared to 28 percent who believe he is.
“Nigel Farage is a multi-millionaire who is out for himself and working for the interests of his super-rich friends,” a Green Party spokesperson previously told DeSmog. “His whole career has been focused on personal gain and public division.”
DeSmog revealed in April that over 70 percent of Farage’s personal benefactors are based abroad – including Harborne, the Thailand-based crypto investor who has gifted flights and accommodation to Farage worth £85,453 since July 2024.
Meanwhile, Reform’s policy positions seem to align closely with the interests of its donors.
Farage has lobbied against regulation of the crypto industry, promising a UK “crypto revolution” if he becomes prime minister, and has shares in digital treasury company Stack BTC. He is due to speak at a crypto-backed conference this week, despite the furore over his gifts from crypto billionaires.
As revealed by DeSmog, Reform has also accepted £24 million from oil and gas interests while denying basic climate science and advocating for the dramatic expansion of fossil fuel production.
The government is currently considering how to reform the political finance system to limit the influence of major donors on UK democracy, with a growing number of MPs calling for a cap on the amount that can be donated by any one individual or organisation. Reform has been lobbying for the rules to remain the same.
Article by Sam Bright republished from DeSmog.
Nigel Farage reminds you that he’s the man that brought you Brexit and asks what could possibly go wrong.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
16 July 2026
‘Inviting the Fox Into the Henhouse’: Canada Delegation to COP30 Loaded with Fossil Fuel Representatives
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Original article by Taylor Noakes republished from DeSmog.
Fossil fuel lobbyists in the Canadian delegation include representatives of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), a lobby group that represents Canada’s oil and natural gas producers. Credit: C2C Journal
Delegation’s composition consistent with new KBPO report revealing this year’s U.N. climate talks have the largest number of fossil fuel lobbyists to date.
Lobbyists and representatives of Canada’s oil and gas industry are part of Canada’s official delegation to this year’s U.N. climate talks in Brazil, in keeping with the high number of fossil fuel representatives in attendance at the summit.
About a dozen individuals representing fossil fuel interests were part of the 240-person Canadian delegation, according to documents reviewed by DeSmog as well as a Nov. 12 Canadian Press article.
“Fossil fuel lobbyists have no place at the U.N. climate negotiations,” Emilia Belliveau, program manager of energy transition with Environmental Defence, said in a statement to DeSmog.
“Their presence here with official badges from Canada undermines the work of Canadians attending COP30 who are genuinely working to advance climate action,” she said.
This year’s U.N. climate talks have the single largest share of fossil fuel lobbyists in attendance to date. Some 1,600 people — or one out of every 25 attendees — are fossil industry or related lobbyists, according to an analysis by Kick Big Polluters Out (KBPO), an alliance of climate and justice organizations that push to remove fossil fuel companies and their lobbyists from influencing climate negotiations and policymaking.
The presence of so many Canadian fossil fuel sector representatives exemplifies the report’s findings.

“It demonstrates the extent by which the current government is aligned with oil industry interests,” Patrick Bonin, the Bloc Québécois’ environment and climate change critic, said in a statement to DeSmog.
“The oil and gas industry is the biggest lobby in Canada,” Bonin continued, “so it’s like inviting the fox into the henhouse … Giving them access to the delegation gives them far greater influence than regular participants.”
Fossil fuel lobbyists in the Canadian delegation include representatives of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), a lobby group that represents Canada’s oil and natural gas producers; Tourmaline Oil, Canada’s largest natural gas producer; CarbonAi; the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA), the Global CCS Institute; and the gas industry advocacy group Energy for a Secure Future.
Huge Industry Presence
KBPO’s analysis reveals that fossil fuel lobbyists at COP30 outnumber every national delegation except for Brazil, the host country. The number of lobbyists also represents a 12 percent increase over last year’s COP conference held in Baku, Azerbaijan.
Fossil fuel lobbyists received two-thirds more passes to COP30 than the total number of delegates from the 10 most climate-affected nations on Earth, the KBPO report said. This highlights “how industry presence continues to dwarf that of those on the frontlines of the climate crisis,” KBPO said in a statement that accompanied the report’s release.
The influence of major trade associations at COP30 is palpable, with the IETA bringing 60 representatives, including delegates from oil and gas giants ExxonMobil, BP, and TotalEnergies. These associations are “a primary vehicle for fossil fuel influence, according to a KBPO statement.
Kathleen Sullivan, global managing director with IETA, is in the COP30 Canadian delegation. It also includes Jay Averill, assistant vice president of communications with CAPP; Scott Volk and Tim Shaw of Tourmaline Oil; and Todd Smith, Ontario’s former energy minister who advocated for an expansion of nuclear power. Smith left office in August 2024 to become vice president of marketing and business development with CANDU Energy Inc., a manufacturer of nuclear reactors.
The Canadian delegation also includes several representatives from Energy for a Secure Future, a lobby group that advocates for continued fossil fuel use to ensure “energy affordability.” The group states on their website that “our gas energy can respond to the needs of our friends around the world who are facing punishing energy costs and are left with options that drive up global emissions.”
Canadian “Carbon Bombs”
However, Canada’s natural gas industry is a major contributor of rising global emissions. The nation’s natural gas resources have been described as “carbon bombs” for their potential to release billions of tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere, according to a 2024 DeSmog article.
“The spectacle of Canada’s COP delegation [serving as] a Trojan horse for fossil fuel interests like Tourmaline and the CAPP is shocking,” said James Browning, executive director of F Minus, a climate accountability group. F Minus recently issued a report detailing numerous conflicts of interest that have resulted from Canadian environmental organization sharing lobbyists who also serve major polluters.

“Lobbying decisionmakers in secret is really just another day at the office for these climate denialists, given the failure of Canada’s lobbyist disclosure system to fully capture the extent of their dealings with Canadian officials,” Browning said in a statement to DeSmog.
“COP may be 5,000 kilometres away, but the deeper scandal here is that Tourmaline’s and CAPP’s lobbyists enjoy a similar, extraordinary level of secrecy in their meetings with government officials every day in Ottawa,” he said.
CAPP has misled the public about emissions from Canada’s oil and gas sector, and has campaigned against anti-greenwashing laws. Heather Feldbusch, one of Pierre Poilievre’s campaign’s inner circle, was formerly a lobbyist with Alberta Counsel Inc., which represents Tourmaline.
“At the COP negotiations two years ago, governments took a historic step by committing to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems in a just, orderly, and equitable manner,” Keith Stewart, senior energy strategist with Greenpeace Canada, said in a statement to DeSmog. “By including fossil fuel lobbyists in our official delegation, Canada is undermining that global effort and risks being seen as negotiating in bad faith.”
“CAPP has been fighting against effective climate action for decades and should be shown the door, not the red carpet,” he added.
Another organization with a stake in fossil fuels included in the Canadian delegation is the Global CCS Institute, a carbon capture advocacy group based in Australia. Critics have long argued that carbon capture is an expensive false solution designed to give fossil fuel production an air of social acceptability. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has used the term “low carbon oil” in reference to carbon capture, despite experts arguing that the term is nonsense.
“Inviting fossil fuel lobbyists into global climate negotiations is as misguided as letting the tobacco industry write health policy, and Canada is compounding the problem by weakening its own greenwashing rules” Sabaa Khan, director general, Quebec and Atlantic Canada, with the David Suzuki Foundation, said in a statement to DeSmog.
DeSmog reached out to Keean Nembhard, press secretary for Canadian environment minister Julie Dabrusin, but did not receive a statement by press time.
Original article by Taylor Noakes republished from DeSmog.
17 November 2025
Labour’s Big Tech Love Affair Could Blow Up Its Climate Promises
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Original article by Rei Takver republished from DeSmog.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer hosts U.S. President Donald Trump for a state visit in September 2025. Credit: Simon Dawson / No 10 Downing Street (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
The government has signed vast deals with gas-loving, Trump-donating AI giants.
When U.S. President Donald Trump landed for what he called the “exquisite honour” of an unprecedented second state visit to the UK this September, he brought along a retinue of his favourite Silicon Valley tech bosses for dinner with King Charles.
Among the guests seated in the gold-flecked banquet hall of Windsor Castle: Jensen Huang, CEO of the artificial intelligence (AI) chip-manufacturer Nvidia, which has recently skyrocketed into the position of the world’s largest public company, and Sam Altman, founder and CEO of ChatGPT creator OpenAI.

Recently, these two tech CEOs seem to have earned a direct line to President Trump and, unsurprisingly, the bedrock of that influence appears to be money – earlier this year, Nvidia and Altman both donated $1 million (£750,000) to Trump’s inauguration ceremony.

When they landed in London, they quickly applied their skills of political influence to Labour.

Altman and Huang’s visit to the UK accompanied the signing of Trump and Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s £150 billion “U.S.-UK Technology Prosperity Deal”, an agreement which includes £31 billion in investments from American tech companies to construct fleets of gargantuan “hyperscaler” AI-ready data centres across Britain.
Stargate UK, a massive AI infrastructure project from OpenAI, Nvidia, and UK AI startup Nscale, is only one of several huge new initiatives introduced via the deal.
On the first day of the big visit, Nvidia threw a press conference to celebrate its pledge to invest a further £2 billion in UK AI.
“This is a historic day,” Starmer rhapsodised about the Nvidia investment while standing next to Huang, lit by the glow of a towering Nvidia logo.
Huang handed Starmer a framed golden Nvidia supercomputer as a gift, embossed with an inscription which Huang asked the prime minister to share.

“This is the UK’s age of AI,” Starmer read out to rising cheers in the audience. “A new industrial revolution begins!”
One glaring omission from Starmer and Huang’s “revolution”? Any mention of how the UK will power an explosion of water and energy-voracious AI data centres – the vast warehouses of supercomputers needed to run the likes of ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini – without completely upending the UK’s net zero commitments.

Instead, on the same day, Huang declared Nvidia’s plans to power its UK AI with fossil fuels.
“Sustainable power like nuclear and wind and of course all of that solar is all going to contribute, but I’m also hoping that gas turbines can also contribute,” he told The Times.

Starmer has claimed that home-grown clean energy is “in the DNA” of his government, yet Labour has so far said little about Nvidia’s plans for fossil fuel-powered AI in Britain – or how it intends to hit its net zero targets while charging headlong into this big tech bonanza.
Too Much, Too Quickly
Labour has already been widely accused of growing too close to U.S. big tech companies.
In recent months, the government has signed wide-ranging deals with seven Trump-supporting U.S. tech giants – Nvidia, OpenAI, Instagram and Facebook creator Meta, software company Microsoft, online retail behemoth Amazon, search engine pioneer Google, and enigmatic “spy tech” company Palantir.

Together, these tech firms have donated a combined $7.5 million (£5.6 million) to President Trump, a figure that doesn’t count the unspecified amounts Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Palantir reportedly gave for the construction of Trump’s new White House ballroom.
The Trump administration has pursued an anti-immigrant, anti-democratic, pro-fossil fuel agenda, which has included an eight-fold increase in weapons expenditure for Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers carrying out deadly immigration raids across the country, and over $1 trillion (£760 billion) in defence spending, largely for weapons, shipbuilding, and military aircraft.
Trump has so far sent National Guard troops into five U.S. cities and cut nearly $60 billion (£45 billion) in aid funding worldwide.

Labour has already struck deals that would see Trump’s big tech allies train the UK workforce in AI, collaborate with the British military, house the UK’s classified information, and “modernise” the NHS. These deals have prompted widespread concerns about their lack of transparency and the threats they pose to UK data security.
Now, further concern is growing that Labour is encouraging American AI companies to run roughshod over the UK’s renewable energy transition.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer speaks with Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, as he attends an event in London in September 2025. Credit: Simon Dawson / No 10 Downing Street (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
“Starmer’s investment deals with U.S. big tech threaten to give them priority access to Britain’s resources – be they energy, water, or personal data – rather than using these resources to meet public need. They will drive a coach and horses through our climate commitments,” Nick Dearden, director of campaign group Global Justice Now, told DeSmog.

That threat revolves around the government’s efforts to aggressively woo U.S. big tech to ramp up multi-billion pound AI data centre investments at its designated AI “Growth Zones”.
To date, several big tech firms have heeded the call. In the past few months, Microsoft has invested £22 billion, Google’s parent company Alphabet has pledged £5 billion, and Amazon – the biggest owner of data centres in the world – has promised £8 billion for UK AI development.

Oliver Hayes, head of policy at campaign organisation Global Action Plan, agrees with Dearden’s concerns. “By striking deals with U.S. tech companies that are gung-ho about gas-fired data centres, ministers are opening yet more doors for lobbyists, exposing bill-payers to greater pain, and jeopardising UK climate targets,” he told DeSmog.
Microsoft, Google, and Amazon have all already watered down or wholly abandoned their sustainability pledges in the last year due to the surging energy demands of their AI businesses.
OpenAI hasn’t even created one. This summer, the firm hired as its energy chief a former Trump-administration natural gas evangelist who promoted exports of American liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Europe in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“One way of looking at AI is that its main use is as a vehicle to give the fossil fuel industry one last reason to expand,” wrote American environmentalist Bill McKibben in response to the hire.
Meanwhile, many of the people running these tech giants have veered into outright climate science denial.
Take Palantir, which builds AI-based spy tech software and has a pre-existing £330 million NHS contract. Its chairman Peter Thiel has claimed climate science is “fake science,” has called climate activist Greta Thunberg the “anti-Christ,” and funds a science journal that publishes climate denial.

Microsoft’s Bill Gates made headlines last week for making what he called a “strategic pivot” on climate change, claiming that it “will not lead to humanity’s demise. People will be able to live and thrive in most places on Earth for the foreseeable future”.
His words contradict the position of hundreds of leading climate scientists across the world, who when surveyed by The Guardian said they expect that the earth will warm by at least 2.5C by the end of the century, which the UN’s climate agency has reported would lead to “catastrophic climate breakdown”.
Trump’s Tech Bros vs. Climate Change
Nvidia’s Jensen Huang is not the only American tech boss with a proclivity for powering data centres with natural gas. Nearly all of the companies partnering with Labour have already embraced it.
Fossil gas as an AI energy “solution” is an import from Trump’s U.S. – the world’s top producer of liquefied natural gas. In July, Trump lauded the idea of powering data centres using fossil fuels while flanked by oil and gas executives.
A growing cadre of U.S. tech giants – including OpenAI, Oracle, Meta, xAI, and Microsoft – are installing gas turbine generators at their data centre sites in the U.S. and Ireland to provide energy to their supercomputer complexes. Amazon previously applied to build one, though eventually withdrew its plans. At the end of October, Google joined the list, announcing its investment in a gas plant with carbon capture for its data centres in the U.S. Midwest.
And many big tech companies are not shy about claiming that these projects are just the beginning.
Microsoft’s vice president for energy, Google’s chief investment officer, OpenAI’s Altman, Amazon’s vice president for global data centres, and Nvidia’s senior director of corporate sustainability have all publicly supported the idea of their companies relying on natural gas as an energy source for AI data centres.
Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and others at Donald Trump’s 2025 inauguration. Credit: WSJ / YouTube
Now, several of these tech giants have set their sights on powering the UK AI boom with gas.

In a June meeting of the government’s newly formed AI Energy Council, which includes Google, Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft, Labour ministers were pressured to consider that “temporary on-site generation, including natural gas fuel cells” could be an “interim measure” to avoid delays in connecting data centres to the UK’s notoriously backlogged energy grid.

The Tony Blair Institute, a think tank with a strong influence on Starmer’s government and deep ties to Trump-supporting American billionaire tech mogul Larry Ellison, the CEO of Oracle, has added its voice to this chorus. The institute argued in a report published in July that dedicated gas power sources will be needed to provide reliable energy to UK data centres as a “bridging measure” to give time for the country’s renewable energy networks to develop.
Campaigners are quick to point out that powering data centres with gas would decimate the UK’s climate targets.
“Off-grid gas plants are a climate catastrophe which could lead to hundreds of millions of tonnes of additional carbon emissions from the tech sector. They would delay the phase out of fossil gas in Europe when we need to speed up the transition to renewable energy,” Jill McCardle of renewable energy campaign group Beyond Fossil Fuels told DeSmog.
This fact doesn’t seem to have deterred the big tech elite.
Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ Earth Fund, Google’s former CEO Eric Schmidt, and Altman have all said, in one way or another, that the AI boom will be worth its skyrocketing emissions because artificial intelligence will help to solve the climate crisis.
“I don’t want to say this because climate change is so serious and so hard of a problem,” Altman said in a 2023 interview, “but I think once we have a really powerful super intelligence, addressing climate change will not be particularly difficult for a system like that.”

Schmidt has argued that pursuing artificial general intelligence (AGI) – a supercomputer as smart or smarter than a human – is the best way to solve the climate crisis, because “we are never going to meet our climate goals anyway”.
Bill Gates told journalists last year that “data centres are, in the most extreme case, a 6 percent addition [to global energy needs] but probably only 2 percent to 2.5 percent. The question is, will AI accelerate a more than 6 percent reduction? And the answer is: certainly.”
Critics say – nonsense.

“The fact is that the climate crisis is not primarily a technological problem: we have most if not all of the tech we need to fix it,” Adam Becker, science journalist and author of More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley’s Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity, told DeSmog.

“Tech oligarchs think that they can burn fossil fuels with impunity and clean it up later with a magic wand given to them by a machine god. But that isn’t going to happen. The reality is that we need to save ourselves from the machinations of these cruelly myopic billionaires.”
Starmer’s Silence
Will Labour regulate the climate-destroying impulses of these tech behemoths?

“This AI frenzy needs to be regulated or big tech will burn dirty fossil fuels to power it,” McCardle warned DeSmog.
Hayes of Global Action Plan added: “Ministers should immediately and unequivocally announce that data centres will not be permitted to connect to the gas grid. Silicon Valley has money to burn, so if they want to put enormous demands on the UK’s energy system, they should pay for new renewables to supply it.”

However, Labour ministers haven’t yet put the kibosh on gas-powered AI.
During the president’s state visit in September, Starmer and Trump – whose administration has reversed American climate policy so dramatically that some experts are now calling the U.S. a “petrostate” – held a press conference for the Technology Prosperity Deal.
With the camera rolling, Trump addressed Nvidia’s gas-embracing CEO directly.
“AI is taking over the world. You’re taking over the world, Jensen [Huang]. I don’t know what you’re doing here. All I can say is we both hope you’re right.”

Through the whole exchange, Starmer sat with folded hands next to the American president, chuckling.
Labour’s Tech Courtships: A Primer
Microsoft
Microsoft, which has donated $750,000 (£560,000) to Trump and recently rolled back its “moonshot” sustainability goals amid a surge in its AI emissions, already operates several data centres in the UK and currently has plans to build a £106 million AI-ready hyperscaler data centre in Leeds.

During Trump’s state visit, and as part of the new U.S.-UK Technology Prosperity Deal, Microsoft announced its plans to invest $30 billion (£22.5 billion) to “power [the UK’s] AI future”.

Microsoft’s links with Labour go deeper than this huge infusion of Trump-affiliated cash. It has partnered with Labour on a number of projects, including joining Amazon in training millions of workers in AI skills, and signing a deal to provide Microsoft’s AI software at a discount to the UK public sector.

Though the company still pays lip service to its commitment to sustainably-powered AI, it is working with fossil fuel companies – selling its AI services to fossil fuel companies including ExxonMobil and Chevron – and actively embracing fossil fuel-based energy options.

As for gas-powered AI, Microsoft’s Vice President of Energy, Bob Hollis, told CNBC in March that powering more data centres with natural gas paired with carbon capture was “not off the table”.

Microsoft already operates a data centre campus powered by off-grid gas generators in Ireland, and had been slated to build a data centre next to a coal plant in the U.S. state of Wisconsin until local opposition stopped the project.
Google
Labour’s deal-making with Google, which gave $1 million (£750,000) to Trump’s inauguration and quietly deleted all sustainability targets from its website in September, has been extensive.

Labour has granted Google a £400 million defence contract to use its cloud services for “classified information sharing”, has signed a partnership with the firm to help the government – including the NHS and local councils – to “modernise”, alongside an agreement for the company to help “upskill” British workers with AI.
Google’s parent company Alphabet – which opened a £735 million data centre in Hertfordshire with Chancellor Rachel Reeves earlier this year – announced a £5 billion investment in UK-based AI research and infrastructure in September to coincide with Trump’s visit.
Google – whose carbon emissions soared by nearly 50 percent between 2019 and 2024 – claims it has signed a deal with Shell to supply “95 percent carbon-free energy” for its UK investments. However, this claim is called into question by the company’s planned hyperscaler data centre in Essex, which will belch out 570,000 tonnes of CO2 each year.

The company has also begun advocating for the use of fossil fuels to meet data centre energy demands.
In August, Google’s Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat praised a speech by the U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum in which he pushed to expand the use of fossil fuels for powering data centers. Porat called Burgum’s comments “fantastic” – “[b]ecause I think it is very clear that to realise the potential of AI, you have to have the power to deliver it.”
A Google policy brief has also detailed the company’s intention to pursue “accelerating innovation and investment in affordable, reliable, and secure energy technologies, including geothermal, advanced nuclear, and natural gas generation with carbon capture”.
Meta
Meta, which donated $1 million (£750,000) to Trump’s inauguration fund, is currently building “Hyperion”, three massive gas-powered data centres in Louisiana larger than the size of Manhattan. The firm is also pursuing a “titan cluster” of data centres in Ohio dubbed “Prometheus”, powered by its own gas plant.
It is also currently working on a $1 million (£750,000) initiative with Labour to provide “government-owned” AI tools for “high-security use cases like language translation for national security” and “speeding up the approvals process for house building”.
At the end of January, former Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, who was Meta’s president of global affairs at the time, hosted a dinner with former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair where tech entrepreneurs met with government investment ministers.

It is unknown whether Meta currently has plans to invest in UK data centres.
Palantir
Palantir, a mysterious spy tech company that builds databases of personal information, is run by a Trump-supporting climate science denier. However, that hasn’t stopped Labour from working with the firm.

In September, the government announced a £1.5 billion “strategic partnership” to “boost military AI and innovation”, in which Palantir will collaborate with the UK military to “develop AI-powered capabilities already tested in Ukraine to speed up decision making, military planning and targeting.”

The partnership comes on top of Palantir’s ongoing five-year £330 million NHS contract, awarded in 2023 by Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government, to create a data platform for personal health information that has spurred fears over the privacy of patient medical records.

The company’s co-founder and chairman, Peter Thiel, is a long-time Trump donor, having given at least $1.75 million (£1.31 million) to Trump campaigns from 2016 to 2020.
Big Tech entrepreneur Peter Thiel, co-founder of Palantir. Credit: Gage Skidmore (CC BY-SA 2.0)
OpenAI
OpenAI is not hiding its intention to embrace off-grid gas as the energy source for its data centre construction frenzy in the UK, or its cosy relationship with Trump.

Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, is closely aligned with both Trump and several climate deniers, having donated $1 million (£750,000) to the president’s inauguration.
Nevertheless, in July, Labour deepened its relationship with the creator of ChatGPT – signing a memorandum of understanding with OpenAI to “turbocharge” UK AI.

The government is already using ChatGPT in “Humphrey”, a Whitehall tool designed to “speed up the civil service by taking away admin burdens”, as well as “Consult”, an AI tool which “speeds up the policy making process by automatically sorting public responses to consultations.”

OpenAI has already started powering data centres with gas. Its U.S. Stargate Project site in Texas, slated to become one of the largest data centre sites in the world, is installing off-grid gas turbines to power its operations.

The firm has chosen not to disclose the carbon footprint of ChatGPT-5, its most advanced AI model to date, despite the fact that researchers told The Guardian it uses “significantly more energy than GPT-4o”. The company, which is rapidly expanding across the globe, does not have publicly announced climate or sustainability targets.

These choices are reflected in the views of Altman, who said in a U.S. Senate hearing in May that “in the short term, I think [the future of powering AI] probably looks like more natural gas.”
Altman has also said that he thinks AI will solve climate change, despite the technology’s ever-expanding demand for power.
Altman’s history with climate deniers goes back to the beginning of his career when Thiel served as his mentor. The OpenAI CEO also previously donated $32,000 (£23,000) to climate denier Michael Shellenberger’s failed 2022 campaign for Governor of California.

Shellenberger has made extensive claims denying the severity of climate change, including that “humans are not causing a ‘sixth mass extinction’”, “the Amazon is not ‘the lungs of the world’”, and “climate change is not making natural disasters worse”.
Shellenberger is well known for his nuclear energy advocacy, which aligns with Altman’s own long-held positions.
In a 2015 blog on Altman’s personal website, he argued,:“The 20th century was the century of carbon-based energy. I am confident the 22nd century is going to be the century of atomic energy.”
Nvidia
Nvidia’s ties to Labour go well beyond its role in the freshly-announced Stargate UK data centre project.
The supercomputer chip company, which donated $1 million (£750,000) to Trump in January, has pledged to invest £2 billion to develop the UK AI sector and to deploy 120,000 advanced computer chips across the UK.
Earlier in the summer, the government also announced that it would collaborate with Nvidia on training the UK workforce via a “nationwide AI talent development pipeline”. An agreement was also forged for Nvidia to provide AI resource tools to UK universities.
Amazon
In June, Amazon, which donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration and is the biggest owner of data centres in the world, pledged to invest £40 billion in the UK over three years, which includes a £8 billion investment in UK data centres.

It is also part of a Labour government initiative to provide. AI training to UK workers.

The UK government’s reliance on Amazon goes well beyond its Labour-era deals – it has won £1.7 billion in UK government contracts since 2016.
Though Amazon announced a plan in 2019 to eliminate or offset all company carbon emissions by 2040, its emissions spiked by about 40 percent by 2023, around the time that it stopped reporting its electricity usage.
It has also recently come under fire for obscuring the full extent of its data centre water consumption.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Credit: Daniel Oberhaus (CC-BY-4.0)
The company has since expressed interest in running its data centres on gas. Amazon Web Services (AWS) applied for planning permission in 2024 to build a gas-powered data centre in Oregon, but eventually withdrew the plans.
At an energy summit this April, Kevin Miller, Amazon’s vice president of global data centres, announced to a room of oil and gas executives that “to have the energy we need for the grid [to power data centres], it’s going to take an ‘all of the above’ approach for a period of time.”
Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder, dreams of a world powered by ever-expanding energy consumption, including AI data centres powered by solar in space.

“Everybody on this planet is going to want to be a first-world citizen using first-world amounts of energy, and the people who are first-world citizens today using first-world amounts of energy. We’re going to want to use even more energy,” he told the audience at a private event at the exclusive Yale Club of New York City in 2019.

To achieve this grand energy expansion, Bezos envisions a solar system populated by a “trillion” people living on space stations.

“[We] don’t want to face a civilisation of stasis… if we just stay on this planet – that’s the long-term issue. You have to capture more of the sun’s output,” he said.
Science journalist Adam Becker called Bezos’s space station utopia “a distraction from solutions to the climate crisis here and now”.

He added: “It’s sad to see one of the wealthiest people in the world waste his power and influence on something so pointless instead of actually helping with the biggest problem that humanity has ever faced.”
Original article by Rei Takver republished from DeSmog.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
5 November 2025