Big Tech Eco-pledges aren't slowing down its pursuit of Big Oil

Employee activism and outside pressure have pushed big tech companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google into promising to slash ir carbon emissions. But re’s ar thing se tech giants aren’t cutting: ir growing business ties to oil and gas industry.

Eco-pledges

When Microsoft held an all-staff meeting in September, an employee asked CEO Satya Nella if it was ethical for company to be selling its cloud computing services to fossil fuel companies, according to two or Microsoft employees who described exchange on condition y t be named. Such partnerships, worker told Nella, were accelerating oil companies’ greenhouse gas emissions.

Microsoft and or tech giants have been competing with one ar to strike lucrative partnerships with ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, BP, and or energy firms, in many cases supplying m t just with remote data stor but also artificial intelligence tools for pinpointing better drilling spots or speeding up refinery production.

oil and gas industry is spending roughly $20 billion each year on cloud services, which accounts for about 10% of total cloud market, according to Vivek Chidambaram, a managing director of Accenture’s energy consultancy. It’s t yet clear wher extraction industry is getting its money’s worth, although experts remain bullish about application of vanced techlogy to oil and gas exploration.

Nella sought to assu employee concerns at September 12 meeting, first by reiterating Microsoft’s internal efforts on environmental sustainability, according to workers, who asked for anymity because y feared retaliation for speaking about an internal meeting. employees said Nella also defended Microsoft’s energy partners, pointing out ir investments in researching and developing more sustainable energy production methods.

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“re’s fossil fuel CEO who sits re and says, ‘You kw, I’m just gonna deny climate change,‘” Nella said, according to employees’ transcript of his remarks. “If anything, y’re all saying, ‘Let us have, in fact, regulation, pricing mechanisms that get us to this future.’”

Focused on helping companies

Microsoft said in an emailed statement Tuesday that it is “focused on helping companies of all kinds become more efficient, including energy companies.” It declined to comment on Nella’s remarks, which were part of a regularly scheduled “all-hands” garing in which CEO welcomes questions on a range of topics.

Less than a week after that exchange and days before a planned worldwide protest over climate change, Microsoft anunced yet ar major deal for its Azure cloud computing platform — this time with Chevron and oilfield services giant Schlumberger. timing of anuncement ahe of climate protest and United Nations climate action meetings angered some environmentally-minded Microsoft workers and caught attention of outsiders.

“It is unconscionable that amid global climate protests, tech giants like Microsoft are anuncing major partnerships with Big Oil,” said Democratic presidential candidate and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, in a tweet that coincided with September 20 global climate strike. “We must hold m accountable, demand y break ties with fossil fuel industry, and move rapidly to sustainable energy.”

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Echoing that mess was a small group of Microsoft employees who carried cardboard signs to a lunchtime protest that day outside of Microsoft’s hequarters in Redmond, Washington. “ Azure For Oil,” said one of signs.

Amazon being pushed to forefront of stability

After months of employee activism, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said he was pushing his company to forefront on sustainability, committing it to have 100% of its energy use come from solar panels and or renewable energy by 2030. But he also defended Amazon’s work with oil and gas industry, arguing that “we need to help m inste of vilifying m.”

Some experts say AI and cloud services could actually play a role in curbing emissions.

Denying cloud computing services to oil and gas industry would do little to dress bigger problem of world’s ongoing dependence on fossil fuels, said Aseem Prakash, director of Center for Environmental Politics at University of Washington.

“We would t want to collapse fossil fuel industry,” Prakash said. “We would want a soft landing.”

If anything, he said, an oil company’s shift to ar company’s cloud platform may have some environmental benefits because it is more efficient than running its digital operations on its own servers. Driving down costs could also help open door to investments in or, less polluting methods for generating energy.

It’s less clear wher AI is mitigating pollution or worsening it. In ir pitches to work with oil and gas companies, cloud providers such as Amazon and Microsoft have boasted of vanced machine-learning tools that can sift through huge troves of geologic and seismic data to help make decisions about where to extract resources. IDC oil analyst Gaurav Verma said AI is a critical techlogy for oil and gas companies that want to learn from that data to study oil reservoirs or predict when maintenance is needed on a pipeline.

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A deal “to make faster and better decisions”

Earlier this year, ExxonMobil struck a deal to tap into Microsoft’s techlogy to capitalize on shale oil boom in Texas and New Mexico. Microsoft has said that real-time data collected from a region spanning hundreds of miles would enable ExxonMobil “to make faster and better decisions” on drilling and well completion and support production growth by as much as 50,000 oil-equivalent barrels per day by 2025.

An unsigned statement from Microsoft’s protesting workers said y’ve been “me complicit” by company’s role in warming planet.

“Microsoft makes millions of dollars in profits by helping fossil fuel companies extract more oil,” statement said.

But it’s t clear if tech giants are actually helping that much — in part because y may be overstating ir own role in transforming Big Oil with AI.

“ sundae y’re selling is cloud,” said Chidambaram, Accenture analyst. “ cherries y’re putting on it is analytics.”

Chidambaram said that’s because oil industries are still cy about sharing what y kw about underground reserves and don’t want third parties analyzing that data.

Chidambaram said in long run, however, AI could actually help meet climate goals. For example, machines that can capture better data and quickly analyze it could also help detect and reduce leak of methane from wells and pipelines, a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions.

“Data can be used in many ways,” he said. “It’s about how it’s being used.”

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