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Minnesota lawmakers squabble over data centers, possible environmental impacts

Mary Murphy — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 11:51:00 GMT

ST. PAUL — Minnesota lawmakers heard a bill on last week to change permitting processes for data centers in Minnesota as large companies like Amazon, Microsoft and Meta are making moves to build more data centers across the state.

The bipartisan bill, SF1393, authored by Sen. Andrew Mathews, R-Princeton, aims to loosen the permitting processes for data centers, as Mathews said in committee on April 8, the state’s current permitting process limits how many generators data center facilities can have.

Data centers are facilities where organizations house computer systems and servers, and these centers require large amounts of electricity to keep these systems cool, according to Amazon. Currently, Facebook’s parent company, Meta, is building a facility in Rosemount, and both Microsoft and Amazon have purchased land for data centers in Becker, as reported by MPR.

“Nearly all current data centers use tier-two diesel generators, which are only permitted to run in emergencies or as part of routine maintenance testing,” Matthews said in committee on Tuesday, April 8. “This restriction prevents data centers from running their generators for any other reason.”

Matthew’s bill would require permits to be issued per building or generator rather than per data center site. Matthews said as the permitting process stands for generators, it caps total emissions as well. But his bill was met with frustration from his Democrat counterparts on Tuesday over the environmental concerns these data centers raise.

Sen. Jennifer McEwen, DFL Duluth, said she is concerned with how large corporations are influencing this legislation but not showing up in person to answer environmental-related questions. McEwen asked during the committee meeting on Tuesday if there was anyone in the audience from Amazon, “A lobbyist, an executive? Nobody? Nobody. Look around. Nobody has stepped up.”

“We are swarmed with lobbyists paid six figures-plus, filling lawmakers' heads with ideas about what needs to happen for the corporations in our state, in our nation ... This is corporate welfare on steroids,” She said.

The U.S. Department of Energy released a 2024 report saying that data centers consumed about 4.4% of total U.S. electricity in 2023 and are expected to consume 6.7-12% of total U.S. electricity by 2028.

Some testifiers on Tuesday took issue with the water usage by data centers. NPR reported in 2022 that in order to keep computer systems cool, the average data center uses 300,000 gallons of water a day, roughly equal to the water use of 100,000 homes.

“We are at a pivotal point, and our water resources are limited,” Avonna Stark, Minnesota State Director of Clean Water Action, said on Tuesday. “As we consider how to welcome multi-billion-dollar companies into Minnesota, we shouldn't be asking, 'How can we sacrifice enough to entice them?' But rather pose the question, 'How will these businesses be good neighbors and honor our environment and our residents?'”

In other data center legislation, Rep. Greg Davids, R-Preston, is proposing a sales tax break for large centers. Davids, chief author of bipartisan bill HF1277, said in the House Taxes committee on Feb. 27 that data centers bring economic opportunity to the state.

"I think it was 2011, and I can't remember who came to me with this idea about these data centers that they were going to be the thing of the future and and Minnesota better get in it, or you're not going to be in it," Davids said. "So I thought it was a good idea to get Minnesota involved in this. We did, and ... it has been a tremendously successful program throughout the state, many jobs, many construction jobs."

The Revenue Department estimates that in one fiscal year, the exemption could reduce the general fund and Natural Resources and Arts Funds by a total of $20 million, according to a February analysis.

Meanwhile, some Democratic lawmakers are looking to close some doors. HF2928, authored by Rep. Patty Acomb, DFL-Minnetonka, would regulate water use, require a 65% carbon-free energy supply and impose fees for data centers.

Another bill, HF3007, authored by Rep. Peter Fisher, DFL-Maplewood, focuses on water usage by data centers. Fisher’s bill would allow the DNR to impose a stricter permitting application process for data centers anticipated to consume more than 100 million gallons of water per year or 250,000 gallons per day.

Matthew's bill was laid on the table in committee on Tuesday and Thursday as the committee ran out of time.

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Bemidji's Matt Gish featured in 'The College Tour' on Amazon Prime

Pioneer Staff Report — Tue, 05 Mar 2024 19:32:05 GMT

COLLEGEVILLE, Minn. — Matt Gish of Bemidji will be featured in an episode of the Amazon Prime series "The College Tour," highlighting the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University, set to premiere on May 28.

"The College Tour" was filmed on the CSB and SJU campus in fall 2023 and features 10 students and alums sharing their stories to inspire the next generation of students, a release said.

Gish graduated with a degree in biochemistry and neuroscience from Saint John’s University in 2022. While at SJU, he was a member of the track team and volunteered with the campus EMT squad.

Upon graduation, Gish spent a year in Kenya serving with the Benedictine Volunteer Corps. He is now a student at the Mayo Clinic Alix �� of Medicine.

"Preparing for medical school was daunting," Gish said in the episode. "I’m glad I chose a small, residential, liberal arts community like Saint Ben’s and Saint John’s. The small class sizes and easy access to pre-med faculty mentorship helped me keep on top of coursework and stay on track toward my goals."

The episode featuring the universities and students is available for viewing on the CSB and SJU website and YouTube channel now and is scheduled to begin streaming on Amazon Prime on May 28.

"Saint Ben’s and Saint John’s are just remarkable places, and taping this episode was a tremendous experience," Alex Boylan, host of "The College Tour," said in the release. "From the moment I set foot here, all the crew talked about was how the hospitality is real — we definitely felt it. And when folks watch the episode, they’re going to see it, too, and hear the passion for both institutions and the beauty in which they’re integrated."

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House DFL takes aim at Amazon in promoting warehouse safety bill

Alex Derosier — Mon, 28 Mar 2022 22:29:12 GMT

ST. PAUL — Amazon distribution center employees joined Democratic-Farmer-Labor lawmakers at the state Capitol Monday, March 28, to share their experiences ahead of a House vote on legislation aimed at improving warehouse worker safety.

A bill introduced by Rep. Emma Greenman, DFL-Minneapolis, would require warehouses with more than 250 employees to provide workers with written notice of productivity quotas and would ban quotas that would interfere with breaks. It would also require employees to provide work speed and quota data to any employee upon request.

Citing a report from the National Employment Law Center, Greenman said that one in nine Amazon warehouse employees is hurt on the job, a rate twice that of non-Amazon warehouses in Minnesota and four times the injury rate across all industries in the state.

“Work shouldn’t hurt. But for many Minnesota workers in Amazon warehouses, it does,” Greenman said. “Workers report pushing themselves to the brink, often skipping rest, bathroom and prayer breaks to meet quotas that are constantly changing and often not even disclosed.”

Amazon's Twin Cities-area distribution center employs many Somali workers, including practicing Muslims who in the past have pushed for time during the day to pray and space to do so. The Shakopee facility has several prayer areas, Amazon said in a statement.

Mohamed Mire Mohamed and Tyler Hamilton, who work at the Amazon distribution center in the Twin Cities suburb of Shakopee, said the pace of work at the warehouse is hard to keep up with and leads to injuries. Mohamed described Amazon workers as "blood donors."

Hamilton, who has been an employee at the warehouse for more than four years, said work pace expectations are often unclear. He said that encourages employees to work at unsafe paces to keep ahead.

"Systematically, people are not set up for success," Hamilton said. "If you go in a warehouse it looks so clean, it looks so nice compared to other warehouses. And yet the injury rate tells a completely different story."

In a statement, Amazon said employees are free to use the bathroom as needed and that the company has a team of "dedicated safety professionals.

“While we know we’re not perfect, safety is integral to everything that we do at Amazon and we don’t believe this is an accurate description of what it’s like inside our buildings," a company spokesperson said of the DFL and workers' statements. "In the last year alone, we’ve invested more than $300 million in safety across the country, and we provide several different ways for employees to raise concerns or provide feedback directly to us if they see room for improvement."

During House floor debate on the bill Monday afternoon, Republicans questioned the need for a bill when the state already has workplace safety standards. They also criticized the bill for appearing to have a narrow focus on Amazon.

Rep. Tony Jurgens, R-Cottage Grove, said he agreed Amazon needs to improve its conditions but wasn't sure if Greenman's proposal was the best way to address concerns. He ultimately voted in favor of the bill.

The House passed the bill 72-60 on mostly partisan lines.

This story has been updated to include more context and a statement from Amazon. ]]>

Company building large Amazon facility in South Dakota secures permit for site work in Fargo

David Olson — Tue, 01 Sep 2020 22:21:26 GMT

FARGO — A company that is building a large Amazon distribution center in Sioux Falls, S.D., and which has built a distribution center for Amazon in Tucson, Ariz., has secured a permit to move dirt on a large piece of land in north Fargo.

Ryan Companies of Minneapolis did not return an email seeking comment Tuesday, Sept. 1, and a Fargo city official declined to say Tuesday whether Amazon was connected to the earthwork planned for a 110-acre site in the area of 37th Street and 40th Avenue North.

Jim Gilmour, Fargo's director of strategic planning and research, said the city has been working on an economic development project since June, though he said he was limited on what he could say about it at this stage.

The city recently fast-tracked approval of a request to annex the large chunk of land — which is next to Interstate 29 and north of Hector International Airport — and rezone it from agricultural to limited industrial.

Although Ryan Companies secured the permit to do site preparation work on the land, as of Tuesday the property was still officially owned by a local family and it was unclear if a land purchase was in the offing.

KELO-TV in Sioux Falls recently reported that Ryan Companies is in charge of building a four-story, two-million square foot facility for Amazon in Sioux Falls that would employ up to 1,000 people.

The report said plans call for the project to be completed by September 2021.

A distribution center Ryan Companies built for Amazon in Tucson is roughly the same size as the project being built in South Dakota, according to the KELO-TV news report.

Gilmour said if someone wanted to build a large distribution center on the recently annexed land in north Fargo they would simply need to secure a building permit for work to start.

In response to a request for comment, an Amazon spokeswoman said Tuesday the company is constantly exploring new locations and weighing a variety of factors when deciding where to develop sites, but added: "We don’t provide information on our future roadmap."

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Flying cars, hyperloops and the other tech predictions that didn't pan out

Bloomberg — Sat, 28 Dec 2019 18:30:00 GMT

Predicting the future is hard, even for the people with the most power to influence it. In 2013, Jeff Bezos said he expected Amazon.com Inc. would be delivering packages by drone in four to five years. Here we are seven years later, the flying delivery robots Bezos envisioned are still at the testing stage and have just started to get regulatory approval in the U.S.

Corporate fortune telling is a common practice in the technology industry, and executives tend to choose round numbers as deadlines for their technological fantasies. So, as 2019 draws to a close and we approach a new decade, let's take a look back at how some of the tech industry's predictions for 2020 fared.

1. Computer chips will consume almost no energy

Gordon Moore was famous for his foresight about the development of cheaper and more advanced computers. Intel Corp., the company he co-founded, stayed in the prognostication game years after Moore retired, with mixed results. In 2012, Intel predicted a form of ubiquitous computing that would consume almost zero energy by 2020. The date is almost here, and phones still barely last a day before needing a recharge. The i9, Intel's latest top-of-the-line computer chip, requires 165 watts of energy. That's more than twice as much as a 65-inch television.

2. Nine out of 10 people over age 6 will own a mobile phone

In 2014, Ericsson Mobility estimated that 90% of people on earth over 6 years old would own a mobile phone by 2020. This is a hard one to measure, but a visit to developing countries suggests we are nowhere close. Research firm Statista puts global penetration at 67%. One milestone achieved this decade is the number of mobile subscriptions exceeded the world's population for the first time, according to data compiled by the World Bank. The statistic is skewed by people who use multiple devices. Concern about the potential harmful effects of video game and social-media overuse by children may mean this never happens. There's now a national movement in the U.S. encouraging parents to wait until kids are in the eighth grade (age 13) before letting them have a smartphone.

3. Jet.com will break even

Jet.com was an embodiment of the startup unicorn, before that was even a term. Marc Lore started the online retailer after selling his previous company to Amazon. Jet would challenge Lore's former employer by offering cheaper prices on products with a subscription that substantially undercut Prime. To do that, Jet quickly started burning through the more than $700 million it had raised from venture capitalists, and critics said the startup had no path to profitability. In response, Lore said on Bloomberg TV in 2015 that Jet would break even by 2020. Walmart Inc. swooped in a year after that interview and bought Jet for $3.3 billion. According to news site Vox, Walmart is projecting a loss of more than $1 billion this year for its U.S. e-commerce division, now led by Lore.

4. The first 60-mile hyperloop ride will take place

In 2013, Elon Musk outlined his vision for a new "fifth mode of transportation" that would involve zipping people through tubes at speeds as fast as 800 miles per hour. Several tech entrepreneurs heeded Musk's call and went to work on such systems inspired by the billionaire's specifications. In 2015, one of the leading startups predicted a hyperloop spanning about 60 miles would be ready for human transport by 2020. Rob Lloyd, then the CEO of Hyperloop Technologies, told Popular Science: "I'm very confident that's going to happen." It hasn't. His company, now called Virgin Hyperloop One, has a 1,600-foot test track in California and hopes to build a 22-mile track in Saudi Arabia someday. Musk has since experimented with hyperloops of his own, and even he has had to scale back his ambitions. Musk's Boring Co. is building a so-called Loop system in Las Vegas, starting with a nearly mile-long track that consists of a narrow tunnel and Tesla cars moving at up to 155 miles per hour.

5. Google's cloud business will eclipse advertising

Selling cloud services became a big business for Amazon, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Microsoft Corp. over the last decade. Google executive Urs Hölzle saw the shift coming and in 2015 predicted Google's cloud revenue would supersede advertising by 2020. Alphabet Inc.'s Google has inched closer to Amazon Web Services since then, but it'll take a lot to outgrow Google's cash cow. The cloud is expected to represent almost 15% of revenue for Google this year, compared with 85% for ads.

6. Huawei will make a 'superphone'

Here's what Huawei Technologies Co. said in 2015 predicting a "superphone" by 2020, according to ZDNet: "Inspired by the biological evolution, the mobile phone we currently know will come to life as the superphone," said Shao Yang, a strategy marketing president of Huawei. "Through evolution and adaptation, the superphone will be more intelligent, enhancing and even transforming our perceptions, enabling humans to go further than ever before." It's not entirely clear what that means, but it probably hasn't happened yet. In the interim, Huawei found itself in the middle of a trade war, and the Chinese company is focusing largely on mid-priced phones for its domestic market.

7. Toyota will make fully self-driving cars

Auto and tech companies alike became convinced this decade that computers would soon be able to drive cars more reliably than people. In 2015, Toyota Motor Corp. made a companywide bet that it would have autonomous highway-driving cars on the road by 2020. It didn't take long for the hype cycle to veer off course. In 2018, a pedestrian died after colliding with an Uber self-driving car. In 2020, Toyota's Lexus brand will introduce a car capable of driving autonomously on the highway, but executives acknowledged that auto companies "are revising their timeline for AI deployment significantly."

8. A Bitcoin will be worth $1 million

John McAfee, the controversial computer antivirus mogul and an influential voice in the cryptocurrency community, predicted the price of Bitcoin would reach $1 million by the end of 2020. McAfee posted the estimate in November 2017, about three weeks before a crash would erase 83% of value over the next year. Bitcoin has recovered somewhat, but the current price of about $7,200 is far from McAfee's magic number. Like other Bitcoin bulls, McAfee is standing by his unlikely prediction. If he's wrong, McAfee said he'll eat an intimate body part.

9. Dyson will sell an electric car

It was barely two years ago when the maker of blowdryers and vacuum cleaners said it would sell an electric car by 2020. Dyson canceled the project this year, calling it "not commercially viable."

10. Uber will deploy flying cars

When Uber Technologies Inc. pledged to deliver on a promise of the Jetsons, it gave itself just three years to do so. It's safe to say you will not be able to hail a flying Uber in the next year. The company continues to explore the concept with regulators. This year, Uber added a form of flying vehicle that's not particularly cutting edge: It's booking helicopter rides in New York City. Last Friday, Uber said it was working with a startup, Joby Aviation, to develop "aerial ride-sharing" and set a new deadline of 2023. Uber Chief Executive Officer Dara Khosrowshahi tweeted: "Getting closer ..."

This article was written by Ian King, a reporter for Bloomberg, with assistance from Bloomberg's Ian King.

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Trump used Pentagon budget for personal gain, Amazon alleges

Washington Post — Mon, 09 Dec 2019 20:50:00 GMT

President Trump's "repeated public and behind-the-scenes attacks" against Amazon led the Pentagon to choose a lesser bid from Microsoft for a massive cloud computing contract that officials have labeled a crucial national security priority, Amazon alleged in a complaint made public Monday.

The e-commerce giant's protest of the $10 billion, 10-year contract alleges that Trump's stated efforts to "screw Amazon" led the agency to opt for a proposal from Microsoft with "clear failures." Amazon pointed to a series of alleged errors and an 11th-hour policy change as evidence that the Defense Department failed to follow the rules. And it said Trump's alleged meddling with defense spending for personal gain threatens the integrity of the government procurement system itself.

"Basic justice requires reevaluation of proposals and a new award decision," Amazon wrote. "The stakes are high. The question is whether the President of the United States should be allowed to use the budget of DoD to pursue his own personal and political ends."

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos also owns The Washington Post.

The Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI, contract was awarded to Microsoft on Oct. 25 after more than a year of speculation that Amazon was the only capable bidder. It is meant to create a powerful, centralized computing system that will enable the military's adoption of artificial intelligence.

The e-commerce giant formally filed its protest in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims on Nov. 8. Amazon made clear in its filing that it wants the JEDI award to Microsoft to be terminated and that the Pentagon "must reevaluate the proposals fairly and free of any direct or indirect improper influence."

The filing cites direct intervention from Trump in early August. At the time, Amazon alleged that Trump directed new defense secretary Mark T. Esper "to conduct an 'independent' examination" of the cloud contract award, citing several news articles.

"President Trump's improper direct intervention, its upending of the procurement, and the President's personal goal of preventing AWS [Amazon Web Services] from receiving the JEDI Contract were widely reported at the time," Amazon's filing states.

A White House spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Defense Department has said that the procurement process was conducted by seasoned procurement experts who had no contact with the White House.

"There were no external influences on the source selection decision," department spokeswoman Elissa Smith said in an email. "The department is confident in the JEDI award and remains focused on getting this critical capability into the hands of our warfighters as quickly and efficiently as possible."

While the company extensively quotes Trump's attacks on Bezos and Amazon, the redacted filing never cites specific evidence of the Pentagon acting on those broadsides. There is no mention of internal emails, texts or other communications that might show Pentagon officials taking Trump's onslaught as a directive to skew the procurement process. Rather, in showing examples of Trump's bias, Amazon makes the case that it must have altered the outcome, because he is the military commander in chief.

The complaint cited the stream of tweets from Trump that targeted Bezos, Amazon and The Post as evidence of the president's interference. As Trump attacked those targets, the company alleges, the Pentagon "took numerous actions to systematically remove the advantages of AWS's technological and experiential superiority, and changed its interpretation of certain technical requirements at the eleventh hour.

The complaint alleges that with the president's interference, the Pentagon "consistently and repeatedly made prejudicial errors, at every step along the way, that systematically favored Microsoft and harmed" Amazon's cloud business, Amazon Web Services. And Amazon tied that to the president's anti-Bezos bias.

"The most plausible inference from these facts is simply this: under escalating and overt pressure from President Trump, DoD departed from the rules of procurement and complied - consciously or subconsciously - with its Commander in Chief's expressed desire to reject AWS's superior bid," the company argues in its filing.

According to Amazon, the Pentagon rejected the company's plan to use its existing data centers that had been already cleared to handle classified data. Instead, it required Amazon to build new data centers dedicated to handle classified Defense Department information. Amazon claims that there was no technical basis for the change and that it was the only bidder who could be burdened by the shift, since it was on the only one with existing sites that could handle classified data.

The change boosted Amazon's total price, making its bid less attractive, the filing states. The amount by which Amazon's offer increased is redacted from the complaint.

Amazon could have sought an order to prevent the Pentagon from immediately moving forward with the new contract. But the filing notes that the Defense Department has said it will not proceed with the contract until at least Feb. 11. So the company determined that seeking an injunction to block the contract was not necessary yet.

Amazon argues that the motivation for Trump's animus toward Bezos is his ownership of The Post.

"President Trump's animosity toward Mr. Bezos, Amazon, and the Washington Post is well known, and it originates at least in part from his dissatisfaction with the Washington Post's coverage of him from before he assumed office," Amazon claims in its filing. "Since at least 2015, President Trump has lashed out against that coverage, and over time he has extended his attacks to Mr. Bezos, Amazon, and the Washington Post, often conflating the three as one."

Amazon declined to comment beyond its protest filing. Microsoft spokewoman Janelle Poole said in an emailed statement that the company has "worked hard to continually innovate over the past two years to create better, differentiated offerings" for the Defense Department.

"We have confidence in the qualified staff at the Department of Defense, and we believe the facts will show they ran a detailed, thorough and fair process in determining the needs of the warfighter were best met by Microsoft," Microsoft spokewoman Janelle Poole said in an emailed statement.

AWS leads the cloud computing market by a long shot. It holds a 48 percent market share, according to the market research firm Gartner, far ahead of Microsoft's 15.5 percent.

It also has a head start in the national security sector thanks to an earlier $600 million contract that made it the primary cloud provider for the CIA. That contract - which effectively subsidized its development of advanced cybersecurity capabilities needed to protect classified data - made it the only cloud provider that holds the Defense Department's highest-level cloud computing certification, known as Impact Level 6. Microsoft's certification is one level below that, although it is moving towards receiving the clearance.

The contract immediately became a competitive lightning rod within the commercial cloud computing industry thanks to a Pentagon decision to award it to just one provider. Although JEDI will not be the Pentagon's only cloud, it will be its largest by far. And because it will effectively become the Defense Department's primary cloud computing operating system for "tactical edge" devices - connected technologies designed to operate in far-flung war zones - it could give Microsoft a degree of influence over the direction of the Pentagon's cloud-based technology moving forward.

The surprise award to Microsoft followed more than a year of fierce lobbying by Amazon's competitors.

Amazon's complaint is the fourth legal change to the Pentagon's JEDI approach since the project was announced early last year. Throughout all of it, the Defense Department has refused to back off its decision to award JEDI to a single company.

Oracle and IBM separately challenged the Defense Department's single-provider approach with the Government Accountability Office last year, before awards were even submitted. After both of those protests failed to block the procurement, Oracle, assuming the award would go to Amazon, brought new allegations that Amazon had fixed the process for itself through a series of inappropriate relationships with Defense Department officials. Those conflicts are now the subject of an investigation by the Defense Department's inspector general.

Court of Federal Claims Judge Eric G. Bruggink issued a ruling in late July that rejected Oracle's accusations and cleared Amazon of the "organizational conflict of interest" that could have excluded it from the competition. Oracle's case is now under appeal.

Bruggink has declined to preside over the current case, because of an unspecified conflict, attorneys involved in the case said in a recent conference call. Bruggink owns some Microsoft stock, according to a disclosure form reviewed by The Post. The American Bar Association's judicial canon holds that a judge should disqualify himself when "the judge's impartiality might reasonably be questioned." The canon further specifies this to include cases in which the judge "has a financial interest in the subject matter in controversy or in a party to the proceeding."

None of those legal challenges succeeded in halting the award. They did, however, manage to delay it for more than a year as defense officials' time was occupied responding to litigation.

Almost from the start, Oracle fought to prevent the JEDI award from going to Amazon. Oracle's executives have frequently criticized Amazon's technology as inferior. In the filing, Amazon alleged that chief executive Safra Catz, who served on the president's transition team, "advocated against AWS in the JEDI procurement process" at an April 2, 2018, dinner meeting with Trump.

Throughout its litigation, Oracle was criticized for its role in delaying what officials have described as a crucial national security priority. Some of that criticism came from Amazon.

"It is kind of a status quo in government that everything gets protested," Teresa Carlson, AWS public-sector vice president, said at a recent conference, adding, "which is kind of sad, because it delays innovation." (Carlson's comments came before AWS filed its bid protest.)

The procurement took an unexpected turn in late July when Trump asked Esper to reexamine the Pentagon's approach to JEDI, citing concerns that the contract would go to Amazon, people familiar with the matter told The Post at the time. The directive came soon after he said in a televised news conference that he had received "tremendous complaints" about the contract from Amazon's competitors, citing Microsoft, Oracle and IBM. Soon afterward, the president retweeted a link to a Fox News segment that referred to JEDI as the "Bezos bailout."

The Post and CNN reported at the time a colorful flow chart depicting Defense Department officials and various Bezos-linked individuals landed on the president's desk. The flowchart had originated from Oracle's D.C. lobbying shop.

Around that time, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), whose campaign has received donations from Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, asked that the contract be delayed, in separate letters to the Pentagon and the White House. Rubio lobbied the president directly on the matter and spoke with Trump about it by phone, a member of his staff told The Post.

Esper replaced Defense Secretary Jim Mattis in July. Amazon claims that Mattis rejected Trump's efforts to "screw Amazon," citing a book by retired Navy Cmdr. Guy Snodgrass, who worked as a speechwriter for Mattis. Snodgrass's claims have not been independently verified, but Amazon's filing suggests a connection to Mattis's departure, calling it "another in an ongoing series of exits from the Trump Administration for individuals who have refused to unquestioningly follow all of the President's directives."

The Defense Department also faces unresolved questions about a surprise decision by Esper to recuse himself from the procurement process just days before the award. In statements to the press on the matter, Defense Department spokespeople have said Esper recused himself because his son works for one of the initial bidders, but they have not offered an explanation for why he waited more than two months to recuse himself.

In its filing, Amazon called Esper's recusal an "unprecedented and bizarre attempt to rewrite the factual record and unsully a process tainted by the President's intervention."

Aside from its complaint, Amazon submitted four videos as evidence. The first is a February 2016 campaign rally in which then-candidate Trump said Amazon would "have problems" if he were elected, citing Bezos's ownership of The Post. The second is a televised news conference from July 18 in which Trump said he would direct aides to investigate Amazon's role in the JEDI procurement. The fourth is the Fox News segment that referred to JEDI as the "Bezos bailout."

The fourth piece of video evidence buttressing Amazon's complaint is footage from Deasy's October hearing. In the hearing, Deasy argued that there was a two-tracked process in which Esper's review of JEDI's overall approach was separate from the team that was responsible for reviewing bids. He said the source selection team had made the decision to award the JEDI contract and that, to his knowledge, the team had not been contacted by the White House.

"I feel very confident that at no time were team members that actually took the source selection were influenced with any external, including the White House," Deasy said.

This article was written by Aaron Gregg andJay Greene, reporters for The Washington Post.

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Thinking about cutting cable? Here's a look at a few options

Emma Vatnsdal / Forum News Service — Fri, 29 Nov 2019 13:00:00 GMT

FARGO — Watching TV is America's favorite pastime, with nearly 80% of the population watching TV on any given day.

That's according to data from the 2018 American Time Use Survey, a Bureau of Labor Statistics survey that collects information about how people use their time. But not all of those TV-watching Americans are getting their televised entertainment through "traditional" means.

When it comes to TV subscribers, 2018 was the year of the snip. USA Today reported that cable providers lost around 1.1 million subscribers in the third quarter of 2018 alone, while over 725,000 left satellite providers.

So, why did millions of Americans choose to cut the cord in 2018?

"Financial purposes, mostly," says Stephanie Krumvieda, an East Grand Forks, Minn., resident and mother of two. She and her husband got rid of their DirecTV subscription in 2017. "We only watched maybe five or six of the channels they offered and (we) hated spending that much money to watch a fraction of what (DirecTV) had to offer," she says.

Oftentimes, customers choose to scale back on their subscriptions simply because they didn't use the services as much as they thought they would.

"I was sick of paying for a large group of channels that I never watched," says West Fargo resident Brian Kleespies, who previously had cable through Midco and decided to switch to streaming services three years ago. "It seems a lot less wasteful to purchase pieces of entertainment, rather than paying $130-plus for cable or satellite that I know I'll never get my use out of."

Fortunately, more and more streaming options are becoming available every day, including the launch this fall of Disney Plus that offers up some of the entertainment world's top properties, including Marvel, Pixel, "Star Wars" and, of course, Disney.

Some don't even make the switch, instead choosing to forego cable or satellite TV from the get-go.

Alex Kizima, a recent graduate of Minnesota State University Moorhead, says she never really thought about getting cable once she moved out of her parents' home.

"To be honest, I've never 'missed' cable," she says. "So after I moved out from my parents' (home), I didn't even try to set it up. I don't know how or where to get it. Plus, I've heard it's expensive, so why pay for it?"

While some don't start out as cable or satellite users, others see the benefit of cutting out the extra "stuff" they don't use.

Streaming services like Hulu + Live TV, Sling TV and YouTube TV have features that allow users to watch broadcasts from local stations, too, oftentimes helping customers make their decisions.

Amy Ouren, a Fargo resident and mother of three, says her family canceled their subscription to DirecTV just three months ago after realizing they were paying for more than they used. However, because of their setup, they still get the local stations they love through YouTube TV.

"I still get my local stations and my main shows that I enjoy watching," says Ouren. "I feel like I actually watch less (TV) now, too, because I don't have so many stations and dumb reality TV shows that I always get hooked to."

What are the options?

When it comes to enjoying TV and movies, the options can be a bit overwhelming. A quick internet search returns dozens of possibilities — each offering unique content and options to watch.

Cable: The tried and true option for over 50 years, cable television brings shows and movies straight into customers' homes via signals transmitted through coaxial or fiber-optic cables, as well as over the airwaves. Originating in the U.S. in the late 1940s, cable television was designed to improve reception of network broadcasts in remote areas. It wasn't until the 1960s when cable was introduced to metropolitan areas as a way to resolve issues with tall buildings blocking over-the-air broadcasts.

Satellite: Like cable, satellite TV brings shows straight into consumers' homes; however, unlike cable, signals are delivered to viewers by relaying them from a communications satellite orbiting the Earth. With features like ease of accessibility and exceptional high-definition quality, customers across the globe have taken advantage of this unique service since the first communications satellite was launched into space on July 23, 1962.

Netflix: Although it seems to have burst onto the scene only recently, Netflix has actually been around since the late 1990s. It was originally founded by entrepreneurs Marc Randolph and Reed Hastings as a website-based movie rental service — allowing customers to rent DVDs online. Today, Netflix is a media services provider and production company that features subscription-based streaming of an online library of films and TV programs — produced both in-house and by other companies.

Hulu: Released to the general public in 2008, Hulu is a U.S.-based subscription video-on-demand service that offers original content, as well as content from partners, along with ad and ad-free options. With Hulu, viewers can enjoy thousands of different programs through their streaming devices, oftentimes just one day after they're broadcast through cable or satellite. Hulu also includes add-on options to give viewers the opportunity to enjoy live TV, HBO, Cinemax, Showtime and more.

Amazon Prime Video: Amazon Prime Video is an American internet video-on-demand service that's developed, owned and operated by Amazon. It offers TV shows and films for rent or purchase, as well as original content and licensed partnerships. All of this is included in an Amazon Prime subscription — which also includes everything that Amazon has to offer, like free shipping on millions of products. Amazon's video service was introduced in 2006, and was rebranded several times before becoming Prime Video in December 2016.

Disney Plus: The newest streaming service just launched earlier this month, Disney Plus is a subscription video-on-demand service owned by the Walt Disney Direct-to-Consumer and International division of the Walt Disney Co. Focusing on the film and TV content produced by Disney Studios and Disney Television, Disney Plus features original films and TV series based on new and existing properties, as well as content from Disney, 20th Century Fox, Lucasfilm/Star Wars, Marvel, National Geographic and Pixar. In addition, because of partnerships and subsidiaries of the Walt Disney Co., Disney Plus users have the option to expand their plan to include a Hulu subscription as well as ESPN Plus.

Sling TV: The first live TV streaming service, Sling TV launched in February 2015. It allows subscribers to watch a collection of live and on-demand TV channels on their internet devices. It's basically cable, without the cable. Sling TV offers two tiers of options for viewers to choose from, as well as add-ons like NFL RedZone, NHL Network, HBO, Showtime and more.

What about the money, honey?

Entertainment isn't cheap — which is why it's one of the first categories to get the snip when that pocketbook gets a bit tight. However, there are ways to trim excess if needed, especially when it comes to TV.

Cable companies offer customers a variety of options to suit their viewing needs. Packages start at $23 for the Fargo-Moorhead-area providers, and add-ons can also be purchased for an extra fee. Contracts generally last from month to month.

Satellite, while often being the most expensive of the options, features the most channels for the price. The smallest packages in the major satellite companies (DISH Network and DirecTV) start at $59.99 per month, with add-ons raising the price quickly from there, all within a two-year contract.

Streaming services all start around the same price — $5.99, $6.99 and $8.99 for Hulu, Disney Plus and Netflix, respectively — while Sling TV comes in at the priciest of the bunch, starting at $25 per month. All of the services include add-ons (Hulu has the option to watch without ads for a few dollars more than the initial price), and include month-to-month subscriptions.

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Amazon pulls skin-lightening creams from site after demands from Minnesota activists

Tarkor Zehn / Minnesota Public Radio — Fri, 22 Nov 2019 14:30:00 GMT

SHAKOPEE, Minn. — After pressure from Minnesota public-health and environmental activists, Amazon removed more than a dozen skin-lightening products with toxic levels of mercury off its website.

The move came after two organizations, the BeautyWell Project and the state branch of the Sierra Club, delivered a petition with over 23,000 signatures to the company’s fulfillment center in Shakopee on Wednesday, Nov. 20.

On that same day, the groups also took out a full-page ad in the Star Tribune demanding Amazon to stop selling toxic skin-lightening creams. The ad had three words in bold print: “Dangerous, racist, and illegal.”

The ad states, “Amazon continues to sell skin-lightening creams that are toxic and promote racist beauty notions. Our tests measured unsafe levels of mercury in products purchased on Amazon, making them illegal according to federal law. None of the products we purchased list mercury on the label. Amazon, stop selling these products.”

On Thursday, an Amazon spokesperson told MPR News in an email, “All Marketplace sellers must follow our selling guidelines and those who don’t will be subject to action, including potential removal of their account. The products in question are no longer available.”

The spokesperson also cited its policy prohibiting suppliers from selling unsafe cosmetics, including those that contain mercury.

Amira Adawe, founder of the BeautyWell Project, has been educating women on the dangers of creams intended to lighten their skin for about eight years. Her nonprofit’s entire focus is centered on eliminating the use of these products and empowering women.

Many of these creams contain mercury yet remain popular among some communities of color. She’s worked on this issue for years locally, but now she’s going after the retail giants.

“For a large retail company selling toxic products to individuals of color, I think it's so wrong. And these are illegal products,” she said.

She partnered with the Sierra Club, an environmental advocacy group, as well as the Mercury Policy Project to test the skin-lightening creams sold on the Amazon site. Out of the 24 that were tested, 15 had high levels of mercury.

The World Health Organization warns that mercury can have adverse effects on the nervous system and kidneys, and can cause pregnancy complications for women who use the products.

Aside from the clear public health concerns, “it's a racial thing that keeps encouraging that people should change their skin color, and we don't want to see that,” Adawe said.

According to Bloomberg, skin-lightening creams are a $20 billion industry. Predominantly, the consumers are women of color.

With centuries of colonialism, some women feel pressure to lighten their skin to align with Western standards of beauty. Research shows with lighter skin comes more societal benefits.

The creams have long been found in local ethnic stores, but now they've made their way online. Although the toxins in products are illegal, Mary Blitzer of the local Sierra Club branch said the products are not heavily regulated. She said many of them don't even include the harmful ingredients, but the unregulated landscape causes confusion among consumers.

She hopes with the extra support of the Sierra Club, Amazon continues to feel the pressure.

“The Sierra Club's role is how are we protecting community health, and we're really proud to partner with BeautyWell and follow their lead on this and just add our voice and bring our supporter's voice to the issue,” she said.

Adawe said she is still waiting to hear back from Amazon before the organizations claim a victory. As of Thursday evening, all but one of the 15 products appeared to be scrubbed from the site.

“Both BeautyWell and Sierra Club did not get any notification from Amazon indicating that they removed the products,” she said. “Unless we get in writing from them that they removed the products, we wouldn't know if it's really removed.”

She said the true test is if the products stay off Amazon’s site — for good.

This story originally appeared at: https://www.mprnews.org/story/2019/11/22/amazon-pulls-skinlightening-creams-from-site-after-demands-from-minnesota-activists

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Arsonists are torching the Amazon. This elite team of firefighters stands in their way

Washington Post — Wed, 09 Oct 2019 20:30:00 GMT

NOVO SANTO ANTONIO, Brazil - No one could stop the fire. It had burned for 10 days already, across 25 miles, when the rancher made the desperate call to the only person he thought could still help.

"Let me ask a question," Edimar Santos Abreu responded. "The fire - is it happening in the forest?"

"The forest!" the rancher said.

Video: One of the only things keeping the last shards of forest from getting torched and bulldozed into cattle and soy farms is the Alliance Brigade. (The Washington Post)

Abreu, 45, put down the phone. Little forest remained in this corner of the Amazon basin in Mato Grosso state. What was once a blanket of continuous green foliage is now a checkerboard of arid and dusty farmland.

One of the only things keeping the last shards of forest here from getting torched and bulldozed into cattle and soy farms is Abreu's team of firefighters: the Alliance Brigade. Known locally as the "guerreiros de fogo" - the "fire warriors" - they spread across hundreds of miles each day to contain blazes lit by land grabbers trying to burn, claim and develop the forest.

The daily battle - between fire and nature, conservation and development - is intensifying across the Amazon. Since the inauguration of Brazil's pro-development president, Jair Bolsonaro, deforestation has soared. Fires now rage across the Amazon. In August, officials counted nearly 31,000, a nine-year high. The number fell in September, but the year-to-date total remained up for 2019.

They're burning in public parks. On private ranches. On government land. On Indian reservations. In so many places, and across such an immense sweep of forest, that stopping them all can seem impossible.

But perhaps here, in northeast Mato Grosso, the forest could still be defended. Where the brigade is active, the burn rate has plummeted. Some describe the team as a potential model for the rest of the Amazon.

The challenge, however, in a land this remote, with few people and little infrastructure, is obvious - reaching the fire in time.

Abreu drove hours down pockmarked dirt roads, past towns cloaked in red dirt, to discover an apocalyptic scene. Cows had died of smoke inhalation. An expanse of charred earth reached toward the horizon. The farmworkers had thrown nearly everything at the inferno, from water to heaps of dirt. Most of it had been defeated.

Abreu had to finish the job.

He peered into a quiet patch of trees.

"Do you hear that?" Abreu asked. "Fire."

He pulled on his cap. He unsheathed his long knife. Then he hacked into the foliage and disappeared into the trees, in search of the fight.

Mato Grosso means "thick bush," and until recently the name fit. The last asphalt road ended long before this corner of the state. The only reasonable way in was by plane. And the humidity of the trees was a natural flame retardant: Fire dissolved at the forest's edge, like magic.

This was the land that John Carter, the former U.S. Army paratrooper who founded the Alliance Brigade a decade ago, came to know when he moved here from Texas in 1996.

Video: Members of the Alliance Brigade, an elite team of firefighters in the Amazon basin, walk through the Araguaia State Park, tracking the smoke of a wildfire. (The Washington Post)

"An island in the forest," was how he described his ranch then. Now, looking out at the Araguaia State Park, he could see that it was the forest that had become the island.

"This wind," he said, feeling it pick up. "It's going to burn today."

"Uncontrollable," Abreu agreed.

They boarded Carter's aluminum boat and chugged out onto the River of the Dead. Carter, a compact man in a cowboy hat and boots, scanned the scorched coastline for plumes of smoke.

When he first piloted his single-engine down here, he had no idea why there were so many fires. But he would learn.

There was big money in "flipping" the forest - burning it, then selling it as farmland - and squatters and speculators wanted in. A Brazilian law allowed the purchase of uninhabited public land here at deep discounts. Then agrarian reform efforts made private land a target for landless poor.

The result was a violent struggle involving ranchers, indigenous peoples and squatters in which the best way for settlers to claim forest, no matter the owner, was to burn it.

"There!" Carter said, pointing at rising smoke. "They're lighting it everywhere!"

The boat sped toward the plume.

Fire so defines Carter's life that it's difficult to remember a time when it didn't. In 1999, squatters started burning a neighbor's forest. In 2008, they came for Carter's land, torching the 50% he had preserved - more than 10,000 acres.

Video: Authorities say land grabbers set fires in the Araguaia State Park in the hopes of degrading it to such an extent that there's no choice but to develop it. (The Washington Post)

Enraged, and fearful of what he might do, he gave away nearly all of his guns. But the anger - that he couldn't dispose of.

"I can't even see the beauty anymore," he said. "I just see rage. Because we know what the future holds."

To Carter, the future: the entire Amazon transformed by an avalanche of development and deforestation. It was a scenario he once couldn't envision. But he has seen it happen in Mato Grosso, on his land, and now again on this river.

Araguaia State Park, half the size of Rhode Island, doesn't have a single patrol officer. Squatters are exploiting the void by lighting fires to destroy the forest so there's no choice but to develop it.

Three fires now flared along the river. Smoke filled the sky. The boat hit the shore.

"Let's see if we can catch them," Carter said, charging into the forest.

Kika Carter couldn't get her husband to calm down.

The smoke had grown so thick they couldn't see across the river. They could barely drive. Barely fly. Barely breathe.

She told him to do something about it. They had launched a partnership that used market incentives to encourage sustainable ranching, garnering international attention. Maybe they could do something about the fires, too.

"This frustration," she recalled telling him. "You just need to get it done."

He wrote a letter asking the Smokejumpers - the highly trained first responders who parachute into remote areas to fight wildfires - to train some locals here. To his surprise, they said they would do it.

The result, according to Douglas Morton, a NASA official and Amazon expert, was "the best-equipped and -trained" privately organized brigade in the basin. The eight initial members roved, fighting fires and championing a counterintuitive premise: Ranchers were less a cause of the fires than part of the solution. They could be trained, too.

On nearby ranches, fires plummeted. In the forest of Alto Xingu, fires fell 77% where they patrol. Smoke diminished around John Carter's ranch, and local health officials registered a 25% drop in hospital visits for breathing problems.

"This could be a model," said Britaldo Silveira Soares Filho, a researcher at the Federal University of Minas Gerais. "When a firefighter is not someone you can go summon to go there and fight the fire, you have to train someone there."

Or it will burn.

Carter and Abreu hurried into the forest, dodging thorned fronds. They spotted horse tracks and followed them. But what they found a mile into the forest wasn't a squatter. It was a fire, burning low and hot.

They stared at it, wordless. They had called federal park authorities but were told the problem was the state's. They had called state park authorities but were told the Araguaia didn't have a patrol officer, let alone firefighters. They had called the police but were told an arrest could be made only if the arsonist was caught in the act.

"We don't have the people or the knowledge to deal with this in the park," said Mariano Neto, the local police chief.

The only thing left was to put it out themselves.

Video: The cleared gap in foliage on the forest floor acts like a moat, making it more difficult for the fire to jump across. (The Washington Post)

Back at his house on Carter's ranch, Abreu pulled on his khaki coat, slid on his boots and tied his long knife around his waist. He was furious. Not only at the arsonist but also at how the broader story of the fires was being told.

The international outrage to him was artifice, whipped up to delegitimize Bolsonaro. Every year the forest burned, and every year more of it was knocked down. Where was the anger in 2007, when far more fires burned than this year? Where was it in 2010, when Mato Grosso was positively flammable, hitting double the number of fires as this year?

To Abreu, this year is barely discernible from most. All that's different is who's in power.

That was why, when people mocked Bolsonaro for saying his critics had started the fires to make him look bad, Abreu didn't join in. On the frontier, with its endless cycle of violence and retribution, it made sense. Bolsonaro, in his calls to develop the Amazon, had "assaulted with words" the environmentalists and indigenous people. Some of the fires, Abreu believed, were payback. Others were deforestation. Others were simply to watch a beautiful thing burn.

He grabbed his hat. He climbed back onto the boat, picked up two other firefighters, crossed the river and went into the forest. The men carried nothing but machetes, a few jugs of drinking water and a leaf blower. Up ahead, smoke was rising. The sound of popping and crackling was everywhere.

The fire was now sweeping in length, the height of its flames reaching 20 feet - and growing.

"Strategy," Abreu said. "Lots of strategy."

He had no chance of extinguishing it. The fire was too big; the firefighters too few. The only option was containment. He would build a fire break - a gap in vegetation around the edge of the blaze - to box it in and let it burn out on its own. But when he charged toward the numbing heat, the flames lashed unpredictably.

"Too much!" another firefighter yelled.

They retreated, fanning out across a half-mile front of fire. Abreu used his leaf blower to create the fire break. The others slashed at the brush with their machetes.

They battled until the sun was gone and the fire was no longer the hot orange of flame but the deep red of ember.

What had taken one person seconds to light had taken three men hours to quell.

They started for Carter's ranch, exhausted, silent. They needed to rest. It wouldn't be long before the next fire was lit.

This article was written by

Terrence McCoy

, a reporter for The Washington Post.

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Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announces new 'Climate Pledge' ahead of employee protests

Washington Post — Thu, 19 Sep 2019 17:29:20 GMT

WASHINGTON — Amazon will become the first signatory of the newly formed "Climate Pledge," a pact announced by company founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos on Thursday, Sept. 19, to meet the goals of the Paris climate agreement 10 years early.

Speaking with former United Nations climate chief Christiana Figueres, Bezos said the agreement would require signatories to measure and report their emissions on a regular basis. The pledge would require companies to implement decarbonization strategies in line with the Paris agreement and calls on signatories to be at net zero carbon across their businesses by 2040. Any remaining carbon emissions would be neutralized with quantifiable and permanent offsets to achieve the pledge's goal.

"Meeting these goals is something that can only be done in collaboration with other large companies because we're all part of each others' supply chains," Bezos said. "We're signing up to help do that."

(Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

Bezos' appearance comes just a day before more than 1,000 Amazon employees plan to walk off the job to protest the company's track record on environmental responsibility. The walkout is part of the larger global climate strike that includes more than 800 events in the United States alone.

"When it comes to climate change, it is critical that national policy as well as corporate decision-making and planning is science driven," Figueres said, following a presentation by Bezos that highlighted melting ice sheets, warming oceans and extreme summer temperatures in Alaska.

Amazon, of course, has a massive environmental footprint, delivering what some experts estimate is more than 1 billion packages a year to consumers in the United States. The company's Amazon Web Services is also the leading provider of cloud-computing to corporate customers, consuming massive amounts of electricity to power its giant data centers, including one in northern Virginia.

The company has long been a target for environmental activists, who claim it's done too little to offset the emissions it produces. And Amazon has resisted disclosing the impact on the climate its business has had, previously declining, for example, to disclose its carbon footprint to CDP, formerly known as the Carbon Disclosure Project, a framework for corporate reporting on environmental issues.

And Amazon initiatives to speed delivery, jetting products quickly to warehouses and deploying a fleet of delivery vehicles to customers' homes, will also likely expand its environmental footprint.

That race to get packages to consumers is a competitive advantage Amazon wields over rivals, who can't match the e-commerce giant's sophisticated logistics infrastructure. But that advantage exists in conflict with any effort to reduce its carbon emissions, said Josué Velázquez Martínez, a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center for Transportation and director of its Sustainable Logistics Initiative.

"That part is not sustainable at all," Velázquez Martínez said of Amazon's push toward one-day and same-day deliveries. He believes Amazon should show consumers the environmental impact of speedy shipping as a way to provide an incentive to choose slower delivery.

"They could do much more in terms of sustainability," Velázquez Martínez said.

Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Bezos said that increasing the speed of delivery can be one path to reducing carbon emissions. Same-day or one-day delivery eases reliance on air transportation, Bezos said. Having warehouses located close to customers means that products travel shorter distances, which can bring less carbon-intensive delivery times.

Amazon has taken steps to make its packaging and shipping more efficient, though that can also be attributed to reducing costs.

Last February, Amazon committed to making half its shipments carbon neutral by 2030. In a blog post at the time, Amazon's senior vice president of operations Dave Clark wrote the company would also disclose the company's carbon footprint by the end of the year.

A group of workers, who've formed under the name Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, are pushing the company to set more aggressive targets. In a post on the website Medium, the group calls on Amazon to commit to being carbon neutral by 2030, to end Amazon Web Services contracts that help energy companies accelerate oil and gas extraction, and to stop funding politicians and lobbyists who deny climate change.

"As employees at one of the largest and most powerful companies in the world, our role in facing the climate crisis is to ensure our company is leading on climate, not following," the group wrote in its Medium post.

Bezos said Thursday that he didn't agree with the idea that the company should stop giving energy companies tools to do their jobs. He added that Amazon will "look very carefully" at whether it's funding climate change deniers.The employee group tweeted Thursday the Amazon's new initiative is a "huge win" for it efforts. But it still wants more."The Paris Agreement, by itself, won't get us to a livable world," the group tweeted. "Today, we celebrate. Tomorrow, we'll be in the streets."

The environmental group Greenpeace has also been critical of Amazon's commitment to renewable energy. In a report last February, the group said the company is wavering on a pledge to move to 100 percent renewable energy to run its data centers.

Bezos said on Thursday that Amazon would aim to reach 80% renewable energy by 2024 and 100% renewable energy by 2030 on its path to net zero carbon by 2040. So far, Amazon has launched 15 utility-scale wind and solar renewable energy projects and installed more than 50 solar rooftops on fulfillment centers and sort centers on the world.

Thursday's announcement also included $100 million donation toward reforestation efforts. In partnership with The Nature Conservancy, the Right Now Climate Fund will focus on protecting forests, wetlands and peatlands to remove millions of metric tons of carbon from the atmosphere.

Amazon will also launch a new sustainability website to report on its commitments and performance. Information will include Amazon's carbon footprint and other sustainability metrics tied to the goals of the Climate Pledge.

This article was written by Jay Greene and Rachel Siegel, reporters for The Washington Post.

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