Amazon.com Inc. said today it’s making a commitment to use 100% renewable energy for all of its business operations by 2030, and to become fully carbon neutral by 2040.

As part of its renewable-energy drive, Amazon is also ordering 100,000 electric vehicles and will invest $100 million in reforestation projects across the world. In addition, it’s launching a new sustainability website so people can keep track of its progress towards these commitments.

Meanwhile, Google LLC announced today it’s making what it says is the biggest-ever corporate purchase of renewable energy, increasing its worldwide wind and solar energy portfolio by more than 40%, to 5,500 megawatts.

The commitments and investments come just a day before employees from Amazon, Google and other technology giants are due to stage a walkout in support of “climate justice.” The walkouts are a part of the Global Climate Strike, which is a massive worldwide protest in support of climate change efforts, timed to take place alongside this weekend’s UN Climate Action Summit in New York.

Technology workers have become increasingly militant on the impact their employers have on issues ranging from the environment to the economy and society in general. Earlier this year, for example, Google employees staged a walkout in protest of the company’s handling of sexual harassment issues. But this is the first protest from tech workers over climate change, and it marks the first time Amazon employees have staged a walkout.

Amazon employees in a statement yesterday praised the company’s latest commitments but said it still wasn’t going far enough.

“As long as Amazon uses its power to help oil and gas companies discover and extract more fossil fuel, donates to climate-denying politicians and think tanks, and enables the oppression of climate refugees, employees will keep raising our voices,” the statement said.

For his part, Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos said the company has had enough of being “in the middle of the herd” on climate issues.

He noted that Amazon’s commitment to become carbon-neutral by 2040 would put it a full decade ahead of the Paris Accord’s stated goal of 2050. Amazon has also thrown its weight behind Global Optimism, which is a group that’s trying to get all businesses to commit to meeting the Paris Agreement 10 years early.

“We’ve decided to use our size and scale to make a difference,” Bezos said. “If a company with as much physical infrastructure as Amazon — which delivers more than 10 billion items a year — can meet the Paris Agreement 10 years early, then any company can.”

Amazon’s efforts to reduce its carbon footprint include a $440 million investment in Rivian Automotive LLC, a maker of electronic vehicles. Amazon intends to buy 100,000 such vehicles, which will start delivering packages to customers by 2021.

An additional $100 million will be used to launch the Right Now Climate Fund, in partnership with The Nature Conservancy.

As for Google, its latest renewable energy investment comprises 18 new deals with suppliers of wind and solar energy from countries around the world, including the U.S., Europe and South America. Google has a policy of buying renewable energy only from new sources rather than from existing wind and solar energy farms. It said its latest agreements will result in the construction of more than $2 billion worth of new infrastructure.

Google has been carbon-neutral since 2007, and in 2017 and 2018 it bought enough renewable energy to match its entire annual consumption.

Constellation Research Inc. analyst Holger Mueller said it was good to see companies like Amazon and Google furthering their commitments to energy sustainability, as their data centers are responsible for consuming enormous amounts of power.

“But being green does not come for free and that extra cost will have to be paid for by customers,” Mueller said. “So long as they are ready to pay for it, it’s a great strategy and an additional reason to move to the public cloud. Most enterprises struggle to buy green credits and do not want to invest in solar power for on-premises data centers that are slowly melting away as their workloads transcend to the cloud.”

Image: Google