Sustainability Factsheet

August 2024 commentary

Environmental 

• Alphabet and Microsoft have been criticised for the large amount of energy and water consumed by their data centres in areas with high water stress, such as the US state of Virginia. Alphabet subsidiary Google used 14% more water in its data centres in 2023 compared to the prior year. Most of this increase has been attributed to the training of the company’s large language models.
• Renewable energy provider Pivot Energy announced a five-year agreement with Microsoft to develop up to 500MW of solar energy production across the US. Microsoft will match customer electricity usage with new renewable electricity generation through the agreement, supporting its efforts to reduce Scope 3 emissions. Under the new deal, Microsoft will purchase renewable energy credits (REC) over a 20-year term from Pivot, which will develop approximately 150 solar farms in 100 communities across 20 states. The first projects are expected to start operations before the end of the year. Microsoft also agreed to purchase 80k tonnes of carbon credits from a US Forest management project based in Northern California. 

Social

• Microsoft’s Azure has been criticised for reportedly being used by the Israel Defence Force to monitor Palestinians in Gaza. Allegedly, the Israeli military uses Azure’s artificial intelligence features as well as its capability to store sensitive information that the military's limited server capacity cannot handle. Microsoft is accused of complicity by directly participating in Israel's killing of Palestinians during the war due to their use of their tools. 
• Alphabet's Google has been criticised for an alleged secret deal that allowed them to target advertisements to minors in Canada and the US by exploiting a loophole and circumventing its own policies. The project reportedly started in 2023, when Meta tasked Publicis Groupe's Spark Foundry with creating a marketing campaign to attract 13-to-17-year-olds to its Instagram app. After Google won the mandate from Spark Foundry, its staff allegedly devised a strategy to bypass its own policy, which prohibited ad personalisation and targeting to minors as well as the circumvention of this rule through "proxy targeting". The true intent of the campaign was deliberately disguised by labelling user groups that were predominantly minors as "unknown" and prohibiting any written reference to age ranges. The marketing program, which is now allegedly cancelled, was first launched on YouTube Canada between February and April 2024, and then on YouTube in the US in May 2024.

Last Month RRI Change

Home Depot's RepRisk Index increased by 11 in August due to two pieces of news from the US. First, five US immigrants have sued the City of Chicago and Home Depot after off-duty police officers who were working as the company’s security guards allegedly abused and hit them while they were looking for work outside one of the company’s stores. Second, Samsung Electronics has recalled over 1.1m slide-in electric cookers due to their involvement in 250 fires since 2013. Samsung has received over 300 reports of the front-mounted knobs on the ranges being accidentally activated by humans or pets, which have led to the fires. The Thai-manufactured cookers were sold at Best Buy, Costco, and Home Depot stores.