environment

Nationwide Backlash Brewing Against Big Tech’s Energy-Devouring AI Data Centers

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Original article by Brad Reed republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

An operator works at the data centre of French company OVHcloud in Roubaix, northern France on April 3, 2025. (Photo by Sameer Al-Doumy/AFP via Getty Images)

“For any Democrat who wants to think politically, what an opportunity,” said Faiz Shakir, a longtime adviser to US Sen. Bernie Sanders. “The people are way ahead of the politicians.”

America’s biggest tech firms are facing an increasing backlash over the energy-devouring data centers they are building to power artificial intelligence.

Semafor reported on Monday that opposition to data center construction has been bubbling up in communities across the US, as both Republican and Democratic local officials have been campaigning on promises to clamp down on Silicon Valley’s most expensive and ambitious projects.

In Virginia’s 30th House of Delegates district, for example, both Republican incumbent Geary Higgins and Democratic challenger John McAuliff have been battling over which one of them is most opposed to AI data center construction in their region.

In an interview with Semafor, McAuliff said that opposition to data centers in the district has swelled up organically, as voters recoil at both the massive amount of resources they consume and the impact that consumption is having on both the environment and their electric bills.

“We’re dealing with the biggest companies on the planet,” he explained. “So we need to make sure Virginians are benefiting off of what they do here, not just paying for it.”

NPR on Tuesday similarly reported that fights over data center construction are happening nationwide, as residents who live near proposed construction sites have expressed concerns about the amount of water and electricity they will consume at the expense of local communities.

“A typical AI data center uses as much electricity as 100,000 households, and the largest under development will consume 20 times more,” NPR explained, citing a report from the International Energy Agency. “They also suck up billions of gallons of water for systems to keep all that computer hardware cool.”

Data centers’ massive water use has been a consistent concern across the US. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported on Monday that residents of the township of East Vincent, Pennsylvania have seen their wells dry up recently, and they are worried that a proposed data center would significantly exacerbate water shortages.

This is what has been happening in Mansfield, Georgia, a community that for years has experienced problems with its water supply ever since tech giant Meta began building a data center there in 2018.

As BBC reported back in August, residents in Mansfield have resorted to buying bottled water because their wells have been delivering murky water, which they said wasn’t a problem before the Meta data center came online. Although Meta has commissioned a study that claims to show its data center hasn’t affected local groundwater quality, Mansfield resident Beverly Morris told BBC she isn’t buying the company’s findings.

“My everyday life, everything has been affected,” she said, in reference to the presence of the data center. “I’ve lived through this for eight years. This is not just today, but it is affecting me from now on.”

Anxieties about massive power consumption are also spurring the backlash against data centers, and recent research shows these fears could be well founded.

Mike Jacobs, a senior energy manager at the Union of Concerned Scientists, last month released an analysis estimating that data centers had added billions of dollars to Americans’ electric bills across seven different states in recent years. In Virginia alone, for instance, Jacobs found that household electric bills had subsidized data center transmission costs to the tune of $1.9 billion in 2024.

“The big tech companies rushing to build out massive data centers are worth trillions of dollars, yet they’re successfully exploiting an outdated regulatory process to pawn billions of dollars of costs off on families who may never even use their products,” Jacobs explained. “People deserve to understand the full extent of how data centers in their communities may affect their lives and wallets. This is a clear case of the public unknowingly subsidizing private companies’ profits.”

While the backlash to data centers hasn’t yet become a national issue, Faiz Shakir, a longtime adviser to US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), predicted in an interview with Semafor that opposition to their construction would be a winning political issue for any politician savvy enough to get ahead of it.

“For any Democrat who wants to think politically, what an opportunity,” he said. “The people are way ahead of the politicians.”

Original article by Brad Reed republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue ReadingNationwide Backlash Brewing Against Big Tech’s Energy-Devouring AI Data Centers

Lawsuit Aims to End ‘Cruel War on Our Environment’ by Trump and Musk

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Original article by Jessica Corbett republished from Common Dreams under  Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Demonstrators hold signs after U.S. Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) was blocked from entering the Environmental Protection Agency to meet with Department of Government Efficiency officials on February 6, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Al Drago/Getty Images)

“Musk has shown that he can and will destroy a federal agency in a single weekend,” said one advocate. “If his deranged antics are allowed to continue, we might never be able to fix the damage to America’s environment.”

A leading conservation group filed suit Monday to stop U.S. President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk from “gutting” over a dozen of the federal government’s environmental agencies and departments.

This isn’t the Center for Biological Diversity’s first lawsuit targeting Trump’s Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, but it is the first lawsuit in the country “challenging DOGE’s efforts to eviscerate the agencies charged with protecting the environment, natural resources, and wildlife,” according to a statement from the group.

The suit names as defendants the Environmental Protection Agency and departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Interior, and Transportation, as well as several entities under them: the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Federal Aviation Administration, Fish and Wildlife Service, Forest Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and National Park Service.

“The world’s richest man has created an alternative power structure inside the federal government for the purpose of controlling spending and pushing out employees.”

“Elon Musk and his hacker minions are tearing apart the federal agencies that protect our public lands, keep our air and water clean, and conserve our most cherished wildlife. The public has every right to know why they’re waging this cruel war on our environment,” said Brett Hartl, the center’s government affairs director.

“Musk has shown that he can and will destroy a federal agency in a single weekend,” Hartl added. “If his deranged antics are allowed to continue, we might never be able to fix the damage to America’s environment.”

The suit alleges “a flagrant violation of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), which requires transparency, open public participation, and balanced representation when the president or executive branch agencies establish or use nonfederal bodies for the purpose of seeking advice or recommendations.”

Trump’s executive order establishing DOGE directs all agencies to form teams, or what FACA calls advisory committees, controlled by Musk. The complaint argues that “defendants have failed to ensure that the DOGE teams comply with the balance and openness requirements of FACA.”

“Mr. Musk and other billionaire and tech executives working with DOGE stand to benefit personally and financially from the DOGE teams’ work, including by securing government contracts, slashing environmental rules that apply to their companies, and reducing the government’s regulatory capacity and authority, including by targeting specific agencies, statutes, and spending decisions that affect their businesses,” the filing warns.

The complaint notes recent reporting that “Musk is using his influence over the DOGE teams to rapidly consolidate control over large swaths of the federal government, sideline career officials, gain access to sensitive databases, and dismantle agencies and regulatory systems.”

“Since President Trump assumed office—and without any congressional approval—the world’s richest man has created an alternative power structure inside the federal government for the purpose of controlling spending and pushing out employees,” the document adds. “Meanwhile, Musk has been named as a special government employee, which subjects him to less stringent rules on ethics and financial disclosures regarding his role overseeing DOGE and the DOGE teams.”

The new case calling on the court to require compliance with FACA comes after the center filed another federal suit in Washington, D.C. last Thursday with the aim of using the Freedom of Information Act to unveil details about what Hartl said “should be called the Department of Government Evisceration.”

It also follows U.S. Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, launching a probe last month into Musk’s official title. The congressman demanded answers from the White House by this coming Thursday.

Original article by Jessica Corbett republished from Common Dreams under  Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Continue ReadingLawsuit Aims to End ‘Cruel War on Our Environment’ by Trump and Musk

Harvard set up worthless carbon offsetting scheme that sold millions of junk credits

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Original article by Fin Johnston republished from TBIJ under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Project has sold credits to EasyJet, British American Tobacco and Ernst & Young

A carbon offsetting project set up by Harvard University’s endowment fund has sold millions of junk credits to major international companies, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) can reveal.

After establishing the scheme in 2012 on land it has bought in Uruguay, Harvard ended its involvement when it sold the land across two deals in 2017 and 2019 worth a combined $450m. But the project is still active today and has sold enough credits to have supposedly offset over 5 million tonnes of CO2 emissions – roughly equivalent to what a million cars would produce in a year.

EasyJet, British American Tobacco and Ernst & Young are all among the biggest buyers of credits from the project.

The current owner of the project told TBIJ it had received no revenues from sales of carbon credits to these companies. A spokesperson for the Harvard fund said it does not comment on individual investments.

The project was given the green light to sell carbon credits in 2012 by Verra, the carbon credit standards body. But in 2022 it was given a rating of zero by an agency that assesses the effectiveness of carbon offsetting schemes.

More from this investigation Tobacco giant’s ‘carbon neutral vape’ was offset with junk credits

The rating means that the credits, which should each represent one tonne of emissions avoided or removed from the atmosphere, represent no change. In other words, the project has had no effect on the environment at all.

The Guanaré Forest Plantations Project, a vast reforesting scheme, was set up following the 2006 purchase of an area of land in eastern Uruguay about the size of Washington DC. It was ultimately paid for by the university’s endowment fund, Harvard Management Company (HMC), a $50bn vehicle which invests to support research and student bursaries.

Though the land was bought through two companies set up by HMC, and the running of the project was outsourced to a Uruguayan forestry company, all the money made from sales of carbon credits went to the Harvard fund.

[section omitted: What is carbon offsetting?]

Carbon offsets allow companies to make up for the carbon emissions they create by paying to avoid or remove emissions elsewhere. Each carbon credit represents a ton of carbon dioxide either removed from the atmosphere or prevented from entering it in the first place.

Offsetting has been the subject of much debate. Some argue it is necessary and provides much-needed incentives for investors to channel their money into green initiatives. Others have said it offers polluting companies a way to avoid reducing their own greenhouse gas emissions.

The $2bn global market for carbon offsets has been hit by a number of recent scandals – with reports claiming that many credits do not represent genuine carbon reductions.

On day one of this year’s Cop climate talks in Baku, an early agreement was reached over rules around the creation of a global carbon market, in theory paving the way for rich countries to pay for cheap climate action abroad.

Among the project’s customers was British American Tobacco, which purchased 130,000 credits to offset emissions from its flagship product Vuse, marketed by the company as “the world’s first carbon neutral vape brand”.

The coffee company Lavazza also bought credits from the project to offset the emissions of a supposedly “carbon neutral” coffee capsule it launched in 2022.

Renoster, the agency that gave the project a zero rating, raised three criticisms of the scheme. The first hinged on a factor known as “additionality”, which exists to prevent companies from going about their normal business – for example running a commercial timber project – and selling carbon credits on top. If a project could run without carbon finance, then it cannot be considered additional.

Documents submitted to Verra state that the project’s objective is to create “high value” timber products. Renoster ruled that carbon finance had ultimately made no difference. “We believe that these trees were going to be planted regardless of the project,” it said.

The second criticism was that the scheme’s “baseline assumptions” were wrong. A baseline number is something given to every carbon offsetting project, against which its removals are measured. The project had a baseline of 0, meaning no emissions whatsoever would have been removed from the atmosphere if the scheme did not exist.

Renoster said that baseline was “not a reasonable assumption for the region” because large portions of nearby land were already being converted from pasture to eucalyptus plantations.

Renoster’s third criticism was that the project was unlikely to run its full course, which was projected to be 100 years.

“We do not believe that Guanaré’s carbon credits represent true emissions reductions,” Renoster’s chief science officer, Elias Ayrey, told TBIJ. “We would not consider carbon neutrality claims based on these particular credits to be legitimate.”

The current owners of the project said: “Carbon credits have been critical for achieving the rates of return that investors required when the project started.” They said this cash means they can let the trees grow for longer before they are harvested.

A second agency, BeZero Carbon, also assessed the project and raised similar concerns around additionality and baseline assumptions. It found that the project had a “low” likelihood of achieving the purported emissions avoidance or removal.

The project has also been criticised by World Rainforest Movement, an organisation that monitors the Uruguayan forestry industry, which said: “Industrial tree plantations in Uruguay have led to land concentration by a small group of corporations and investment funds. They replace an extremely important ecosystem – grasslands – to plant tree monocultures, destroying biodiversity and watersheds.”

A BAT spokesperson told TBIJ that its carbon neutrality claim was independently validated in 2021. Lavazza said it had removed the claims from its products and is dedicated to transparency in all its sustainability initiatives.

An EasyJet spokesperson told TBIJ that it transitioned away from offsetting in 2022 but until then “had robust due diligence processes in place”.

Ernst & Young said it selects offsetting projects which have been certified against internationally recognised standards and continues to work on its due diligence procedures. It said it retired all remaining credits in this project in 2023.

This story was updated on 20 November 2024 to clarify the response given to TBIJ by the Harvard fund.

Reporter: Fin Johnston
Global health editor: Fiona Walker
Deputy editor: Chrissie Giles
Editor: Franz Wild
Impact producer: Paul Eccles
Production editor: Alex Hess
Fact checker: Somesh Jha

TBIJ has a number of funders, a full list of which can be found here. None of our funders have any influence over editorial decisions or output.

Original article by Fin Johnston republished from TBIJ under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Continue ReadingHarvard set up worthless carbon offsetting scheme that sold millions of junk credits

Labour’s biggest corporate donor Ecotricity accused of ‘greenwashing’

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Original article by Martin Williams republished from OpenDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

Ecotricity’s founder, Dale Vince.  Bloomberg / Contributor

Exclusive: Energy firm making ‘misleading’ claims about ‘neutralising’ gas with carbon credits

The Labour Party’s biggest corporate donor has been accused of “greenwashing” after an investigation by openDemocracy.

Ecotricity Ltd, which has given almost £3.4m to Labour since Keir Starmer became leader in 2020, claims to be “Britain’s greenest energy supplier”.

Yet 99% of the gas it supplies comes from fossil fuels. The company claims this gas is “carbon-neutralised” because it invests in “carbon reduction programmes to cancel out the carbon burned”.

But openDemocracy has learned that Ecotricity has no active carbon credits – despite listing four environmental projects on its website that it says it supports.

When questioned about the company’s claims that “carbon emissions from our fossil fuel gas are offset by investing in carbon reduction schemes”, a spokesperson admitted that some of the schemes it previously supported had not done “as promised” – and said that information on its website would be “refreshed”.

But experts warned that even if the company held active carbon credits, its claims that these “neutralise” its fossil fuel gas would still be misleading.

“It is highly misleading for a company to claim that its product – or itself – is carbon- or climate-neutral,” said Lindsay Otis Nilles from Carbon Market Watch. “These false claims are based on heavily flawed scientific principles and lead to consumer confusion.”

The company has not broken any laws, but it will be illegal to claim that carbon offsets can “neutralise” fossil fuel products in the EU from 2026, as the bloc looks to crack down on greenwashing. An EU directive says these claims create a “false impression to consumers that the consumption of that product does not have an environmental impact”.

Analysis by openDemocracy shows that some of the carbon offset projects that Ecotricity previously pumped money into have been linked to environmental concerns and human rights abuses.

In some cases, records cast doubt on whether the company’s offsetting credits actually helped to reduce emissions at all – since the projects it invested in were already fully funded.

For example, two years ago, Ecotricity purchased credits in the Soubré hydropower plant, the largest hydroelectric dam in Ivory Coast, which was completed in 2017.

The project cost around £452m, 85% of which had already been secured by January 2017, with a loan from EXIM Bank of China. The remaining 15% was covered by the Ivory Coast government.

The Soubré powerplant previously came under fire in a 2019 report that accused it of having an “irresponsible” approach to monitoring its potential environmental impact.

The report, which was published by American environment and human rights organisation International Rivers, also included complaints by workers at the dam of instances of “discrimination and physical abuse” and “threats from the government” when they spoke out.

Meanwhile, the project’s main contractor, Chinese firm Sinohydro – which is responsible for its engineering, procurement and construction – has faced allegations of fraud elsewhere.

The company is currently excluded from projects financed by the European Investment Bank, following an investigation into “misconduct”. And in 2018, another investigation by the African Development Bank found that Sinohydro had “engaged in a fraudulent practice”.

Ecotricity has also held carbon credits in another hydroelectric power plant in Indonesia, called Asahan 1. Reports from as far back as 2012 say the company behind it, PT Bajradaya Sentranusa, had already secured funding from a bank “to take over the entire existing project loans for the construction” when Ecotricity bought the credits.

A spokesperson for Ecotricity said: “The information on the website about carbon reduction projects is being refreshed.”

They added: “We used carbon credits to entirely offset our gas supply for the financial year 2024 which is now closed and our offsetting programme for the financial year 2025 is currently under review which is why we do not currently hold any credits. Any suggestion that we do not or will not offset our gas in the future is false and misleading.”

“Offsetting is an annual accounting period practice and can take place at any point in that [financial year] – that is standard practice. Our offsetting programme for the financial year 2025 is currently under review. Any suggestion that we do not or will not offset our gas is wrong.”

The spokesperson added that Ecotricity is looking at “more direct carbon capture methods”, adding: “Carbon offsetting has been a bridge. We have always been clear about that.”

‘Greenwashing’

Ecotricity not only boasts about its own climate credentials, it also actively warns customers about “greenwashing” by rival energy suppliers.

“A number of energy companies claim green credentials for themselves or for some of their tariffs,” it says, “but are their claims genuine?”

But Ecotricity has itself now been accused of greenwashing. Responding to the company’s claims about carbon offsets, Nilles of Carbon Market Watch told openDemocracy: “It is a fallacy to think that purchasing carbon credits on the voluntary carbon market can magically ‘cancel out’ or ‘offset’ climate harm. Greenwashing practices like this must stop once and for all.”

Ecotricity’s founder, Dale Vince, recently joined Labour’s campaign in Bristol. His involvement in the constituency is controversial because it is seen as one of the few seats the Green Party has a genuine chance of winning in this week’s general election. But Vince tweeted: “Labour has a green manifesto and can make it happen.”

The self-styled “green industrialist” is the outright owner of Ecotricity’s parent company, Green Britain Group Limited. According to the latest accounts filed with Companies House, this firm made £38m profit in the year ending 30 April last year, after bringing in more than £550m turnover.

Responding to openDemocracy, Vince repeated the claim that carbon credits were used to achieve “net neutrality”.

He said: “Ecotricity bought carbon credits from the Asahan and Soubre schemes two years ago – we no longer do so. We’ve been reducing our carbon footprint annually for decades and only recently used carbon credits to achieve net neutrality, for our green gas while we built new gasmills.

“It’s important to reduce as far as possible before using credits, but that world is full of uncertainty, risk and projects that don’t do as promised, which these two schemes appear to be an example of. We welcome the EU move to clamp down on all forms of greenwashing.”

Vince accused openDemocracy of a “smear attack” with a “rather distorted presentation of facts”.

Prior to this response, openDemocracy had repeatedly asked Ecotricity to provide a complete and up-to-date list of its carbon credit portfolio, but it failed to do so.

Last week, Vince told the Financial Times that he was not seeking support for his own energy projects from Labour. “I don’t want support for my projects,” he said, “I’m not interested, life’s too short to be chasing money.”

The latest accounts filed by Green Britain Group Limited show it received £123m in “government grants” in the year ending April 2023. The financial support was designed to pay energy firms to cap prices for consumers.

The previous year, the company received a £9.4m Covid “business interruption” loan to support large companies in the pandemic.

However, Vince told openDemocracy: “Ecotricity hasn’t had any government subsidies.”

Original article by Martin Williams republished from OpenDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

Continue ReadingLabour’s biggest corporate donor Ecotricity accused of ‘greenwashing’

How climate experts have rated parties’ green policies ahead of the election

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https://leftfootforward.org/2024/05/how-climate-experts-have-rated-parties-green-policies-ahead-of-the-election/

How do Labour, Conservatives, Greens and Lib Dems compare on their promises for the environment

Groups and campaigners have called on parties to make climate and nature a core issue at the general election as meticulous scrutiny begins on party policies ahead of the general election.

Party manifestos are yet to be published, however environmental experts at Friends of the Earth have scored Labour, the Conservatives, Greens and the Lib Dems on their green commitments so far.

It comes as no surprise that the Conservative Party have come in a dismal last, scoring pretty disastrously on most of the ten policy areas analysed. Campaign group Greenpeace recently slammed the Tory Party for leaving the country, “crumbing, bereft of hope, and its climate record in tatters” after the last 14 years.

Most alarmingly the Tory Party scored the only 0 out of 10 in the category of ‘defending democracy’ based on its recent introduction of draconian legislation clamping down on protest. 

Also unsurprisingly the Green Party came in top, with the Lib Dems second and Labour third. Labour’s commitment to creating Great British Energy has been praised by green campaigners. However Friends of the Earth has said the party must go further, as its score lagged behind the Lib Dems and Greens and “falls well short of what’s needed to deliver on the climate and nature emergencies”.

Friends of the Earth stressed that the ratings are a snapshot of the current moment, and policies published in the coming weeks will better reveal how the party’s commitments shape up in real terms. 

Overall, the environmental group scored the Conservatives 27/100, Labour 51/100, the Lib Dems 68/100 and the Green Party 82/100.

…

Article continues at https://leftfootforward.org/2024/05/how-climate-experts-have-rated-parties-green-policies-ahead-of-the-election/

Continue ReadingHow climate experts have rated parties’ green policies ahead of the election