Google will cease to develop software tools based on artificial intelligence (AI) to help oil companies in exploration and extraction of raw materials.
This promise was made after Tuesday, the report Greenpeace has been told that, like Google, Microsoft and Amazon use AI to help companies such as Shell, BP and ExxonMobil in exploration and extraction from the earth of oil and gas deposits. At the same time, oil companies will still be able to use the cloud computing platform Google to control activities or data storage.
“Despite the fact that Google still has some old contracts with oil and gas companies, we welcome the decision of Google that it will no longer create solutions for oil and gas production,” said Elizabeth Jardim (Elizabeth Jardim), senior corporate activist in the American branch of Greenpeace.
Previously, activists have criticized the plans of the General Director of Amazon Jeff Bezos to invest $10 billion of his personal wealth in projects to combat climate change the initiative Bezos Earth Fund. According to Elizabeth Jardim, Bezos is trying to please everyone, doing contradictory things: on the one hand, he cares about the problems of climate change, on the other — stimulates the development of the industry of extraction of fossil fuels, by providing advanced computing technologies for the oil and gas industry, according to activists.
for Example, a multinational oil and gas company BP is one of the main AWS customers. We also know that she uses cloud-based data analysis tools of Microsoft.
“Despite the commitments of the largest cloud companies in the fight against climate change, Microsoft, Google and Amazon have some of the most polluting [the environment — approx. ed.] of the oil companies in the world who are clearly trying to get as much oil and gas out of the ground and deliver it to market faster and cheaper,” the report says Greenpeace.
Google has a reputation as one of the “greenest” of the major technology companies in the world. Unlike other tech giants, since 2007 it is carbon neutral, using strategies such as buying renewable energy to offset the use of nonrenewable energy sources.
Amazon has pledged to be carbon neutral by 2040, while Microsoft pledged to be carbon neutral by 2030.
the Greenpeace report entitled “How technology companies help big oil companies to profit from destroying the climate”, Microsoft named technology giant with the largest number of contracts for oil and gas production, it is argued that the company “offers solutions based on AI at all stages of oil production”.
Microsoft responded to this report in the blog the message that the company are encouraged by the growing number of commitments in the energy sector in relation to the transition to cleaner sources of energy and reduce carbon emissions.
“We agree that the world is facing a pressing issue of carbon emissions and we must do more and faster to achieve zero emissions of carbon dioxide in the future, writes in a post Microsoft. —
the Reality is that currently, the energy in the world comes from fossil fuels, and increasing living standards all over the world, the world will need more energy. This makes the implementation of the future with zero carbon emissions one of the most difficult transition processes in the history of mankind”.
meanwhile, Amazon has contracts mainly in the middle and lower phase of oil production, the report says, furthermore, hAmazon focused on the pipelines, shipping and storage for oil and gas companies.
“Cloud service mazon Web Services (AWS) is the world’s largest virtual home to millions of websites and is currently used by oil and gas companies to more efficiently export the oil to market,” commented Greenpeace.
Close ties to Amazon with oil and gas sector to criticism from employees, United in a group of Amazon Employees for Climate Justice (AECJ), which earlier called on Amazon to stop selling its technology in this sector. In the beginning of this year, reports surfaced that Amazon has made changes to its policy for external communications to employees not spoken publicly on the issues of climate change, threatening to fire anyone who violates it.
