Amazon’s $1B plan to combat data center backlash draws more backlash

Amazon said on Friday it will donate more than $1 billion over the next five years to communities neighboring its data centers. In a press release, Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman said communities would decide how to prioritize the funds across "education, job training, energy affordability, water, and energy preservation, and local priorities."

Amazon also promised that data centers would not increase power bills or wipe out local water supplies. It said it would be "water positive" by 2030 and claimed 75 percent of projects have already met that goal.

In rolling out the commitments, Garman echoed Donald Trump's claims that foreign disinformation campaigns are fueling protests, saying calls for data moratoriums must end or American frontier AI might fall behind China's. According to Garman, US rivals are trying to "trick us into slowing down."

The nonprofit Stand.Earth told Ars that Amazon is the one being misleading by spreading corporate propaganda. It described the donations as a flailing attempt at damage control for harm already caused, and said billions of dollars in data center projects have been blocked nationwide.

Stand.Earth highlighted Amazon's plan to back a power plant that experts expect will become the largest source of US climate pollution, in Pecos, Texas. It said Amazon's commitments do not mention the plant and scarcely address pollution, apart from a promise to rely on back-up generators using the lowest possible emissions.

Stand.Earth said the plant would mean communities face 33 million tons of harmful air pollution every year, using the same amount of energy needed to run more than 1.9 million homes. It also disputed Amazon's claim that most data center generators sit idle, saying Amazon emphasized about 10 hours per year of run time while Stand.Earth cited cases of diesel back-up power running for days at a time.

Stand.Earth said one part of Amazon's deal is promising: ending the practice of using nondisclosure agreements when building new data centers, which it said will likely help make projects more transparent. It said many key community concerns remain unaddressed, including water used by energy infrastructure powering data centers and potential forever-chemical contamination from nascent cooling technologies.

Garman said in the press release that Amazon contributed the same amount, more than $1 billion, to data center communities over the past three years. Stand.Earth said that compared with the $220 billion Amazon is investing in data centers in 2026 alone, the commitment is a drop in the bucket.