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Amazon Announces $2B Fund to Invest in Climate Tech Companies

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Re: Amazon Announces $2B Fund to Invest in Climate Tech Companies

#71

Post by ip26 »

oh_sigh wrote: post #60
reizorc wrote: post #56

"If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted,... CO2 will need to be reduced ...to at most 350 ppm, but likely less than that - Hansen et al.(2008)" [1] Neutral is not enough. So I hope they will be plowing large amounts of the fund into negative-emissions technologies. Either that or make large swathes of the planet into a disco ball.…

Proactively attempting to change the planet to fit our presumed desires seems even more irresponsible than trying to simply negate our effect on the planet. And realistically, the planet was more like an iceball than it is today for a vast majority of the timeline of homo sapiens.

Pre-industrial revolution levels were 280ppm, so a target of 350ppm is still well within "roll back the damage we've done", rather than "mold the planet to our whims"

Re: Amazon Announces $2B Fund to Invest in Climate Tech Companies

#72

Post by ip26 »

depr wrote: post #18
pphysch wrote: post #4

> Amazon announced it’s on a path to run on 100% renewable energy by 2025, five years ahead of schedule. A possible silver lining of market domination is the ability to tackle issues like climate change without falling behind competitors who aren't making those harder choices. Unless this is all PR and Amazon is actively burning down their namesake or something?

In some cases, Amazon uses e.g. subsidied wind energy for new data centers. However, this means the renewable energy is not going to neighboring homes, which are instead still using non-renewables.

Not an economist, but I believe as long as they are willing to pay a premium for carbon-neutral energy, it's a net good thing as it increases the viability of carbon-neutral projects.

Re: Amazon Announces $2B Fund to Invest in Climate Tech Companies

#73

Post by dublinben »

Kalium wrote: post #37
skrebbel wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But you’ve gotta admit they’re like 10 times better than the alternative. Not if the alternative is bikeable and walkable cities with decent public transport, though.

OK. Let's say a magic wand is waved, and all of us Americans have bikeable and walkable cities with excellent public transportation. Let's say this happens literally overnight. How do you expect this would change Amazon's logistics and how favorable they are for consumers? For my part, at the very least, I'm still likely to get a lot of things delivered. Local stores are very rarely cheaper for anything non-immediate…

Last-mile logistics in bikeable and walkable cities would be accomplished with zero-emission vehicles like electric cargo bicycles. They're already being used in cities that support them.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/andriacheng/2019/12/04/amid-rec...

Re: Amazon Announces $2B Fund to Invest in Climate Tech Companies

#74

Post by thinkharderdev »

ip26 wrote: post #68
lukifer wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is your alternative proposal? According to the "The Largest Public Statement of Economists in History": a carbon tax and dividend [0]. The technology of markets is one of price signals and feedback loops, generally on time horizons between nano-second HFTs and quarterly earnings reports. Ecological events, occurring on the scale of decades or centuries, require governments (or other forms of collective action)…

The tax & divided definitely seems like an ideal solution, but we can't waste another twenty years trying to convince voters to institute it. Carbon tax & dividend proposals have gone nowhere for twenty years now. Even in Washington, the latest attempt lost by almost 70% against.

Right, and more to the point the point of a carbon tax is to incentive the private sector to decarbonize which will require capital investments in clean tech. The problem isn't going to be solved by everyone reducing their carbon footprint by 10%. Everyone has to reduce their carbon footprint to zero and then we most likely still need to be pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere.

Re: Amazon Announces $2B Fund to Invest in Climate Tech Companies

#75

Post by thinkharderdev »

santoshalper wrote: post #42
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My point is, equities are ill suited incentives for even economic profits, let alone environmental "profits." What is your alternative proposal? It's not like Amazon's $2B investment in climate tech is mutually exclusive with government initiatives or other climate research. It's another angle to approach the problem, using the tools they have at their disposal. I don't understand the desire to assume the most cyni…

They could pay taxes and we could, as a nation, decide how best to coordinate efforts to fight climate change.

This is an odd position to take given that, as a nation, we have failed spectacularly to address climate change in any way whatsoever. Will Amazon paying more in taxes substantially change the political economy of climate legislation somehow?

Re: Amazon Announces $2B Fund to Invest in Climate Tech Companies

#76

Post by chillacy »

oh_sigh wrote: post #60
reizorc wrote: post #56

"If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted,... CO2 will need to be reduced ...to at most 350 ppm, but likely less than that - Hansen et al.(2008)" [1] Neutral is not enough. So I hope they will be plowing large amounts of the fund into negative-emissions technologies. Either that or make large swathes of the planet into a disco ball.…

Proactively attempting to change the planet to fit our presumed desires seems even more irresponsible than trying to simply negate our effect on the planet. And realistically, the planet was more like an iceball than it is today for a vast majority of the timeline of homo sapiens.

We've already started geo-engineering, just not intentionally.

Re: Amazon Announces $2B Fund to Invest in Climate Tech Companies

#77

Post by toomuchtodo »

cogman10 wrote: post #67
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My point is, equities are ill suited incentives for even economic profits, let alone environmental "profits." What is your alternative proposal? It's not like Amazon's $2B investment in climate tech is mutually exclusive with government initiatives or other climate research. It's another angle to approach the problem, using the tools they have at their disposal. I don't understand the desire to assume the most cyni…

Really depends on HOW they are investing IMO. 2B in equities won't really do anything other than raise the stock prices for green technologies. 2B in green bonds or direct funding may help to move the needle if the case is that these companies are cash strapped. But, IMO, the thing that will actually move the needle more than anything else is if Amazon takes that 2B and actually goes out and builds out renewable sour…

> It would be a sizable impact if they powered all their services with renewable sources, especially if they don't fall back on the grid (so building out storage for themselves).

Google uses Tomorrow's ElectricityMap [1] engine and forecasting to schedule and stage workloads based on clean energy availability [2] [3]. I am curious if Amazon would consider doing the same for themselves (and tangentially related, Microsoft as well), but also expose AWS clients to pricing signals to shift client workloads to "cleaner" locations. It would be carbon tax of sorts, but mandated by technology providers instead of government.

For example, if you were so inclined, you'd want to run your workloads during the day in AWS' west coast datacenters (as California generates an enormous amount of energy during the day from solar, and electricity in the PNW is primarily hydro), or Texas when there's a large amount of wind power on the ERCOT grid. You would not want to run your workloads anywhere where coal and natural gas were the primary sources of power.

[1] https://www.electricitymap.org/?wind=false&solar=false&page=...

[2] https://www.tmrow.com/blog/announcing-our-partnership-with-g...

[3] https://blog.google/inside-google/infrastructure/data-center...

Re: Amazon Announces $2B Fund to Invest in Climate Tech Companies

#78

Post by [deleted] »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #30
an_opabinia wrote: post #13

Suppose the investments turn out to be wildly successful. They turn $2b into $200b. They could still fail at the goal of slowing global warming. The accounting value of an equity, especially a growth stage company, is never the same as its economic value. When in history has accounting (like a price) measured something real / believable about the environment? One way to look at this is what is the environmental impac…

> My point is, equities are ill suited incentives for even economic profits, let alone environmental "profits." What is your alternative proposal? It's not like Amazon's $2B investment in climate tech is mutually exclusive with government initiatives or other climate research. It's another angle to approach the problem, using the tools they have at their disposal. I don't understand the desire to assume the most cyni…

[deleted]

Re: Amazon Announces $2B Fund to Invest in Climate Tech Companies

#79

Post by tito »

We need to go carbon negative. Microsoft announced a $1B commitment to go carbon negative by 2030. This sets the course for the rise of air mining technologies.

Interview with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeQxTI-s48A

Carbon Removal Weekly Update on the Microsoft announcement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J429u4RxkI0&t=21s

Re: Amazon Announces $2B Fund to Invest in Climate Tech Companies

#80

Post by Proven »

Why not take back some of that tax money.

Government spending is out of control and, for now at least, can keep growing. At the same time competition is weak and most "customers" buy that green crap because governments force them to. You'll become Amazon customer whether you want it or not.

What's not to like?

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