Security arrived about 8 a.m. and Seattle police arrived a few minutes later as Amazon employees cried, shouted, cursed and tried to force their way inside the company’s corporate headquarters downtown on Wednesday morning.
Blocking their way stood scores of climate protesters, stationed in front of at least five of Amazon’s Day 1 building entrances, the parking garage and an Amazon Go store.
They’re sorry for the inconvenience, organizers said, but the tech company’s carbon footprint is already massive and is expected to grow larger, despite corporate leadership promising the opposite.
“Hey hey, ho ho, fracked gas has got to go,” they chanted.
“Fracked gas is a fossil fuel, renewable energy is way more cool,” others yelled.
The protesters — part of a group called Troublemakers — are hoping to force Amazon to distance itself from a controversial natural gas pipeline project spanning from Canada, through Idaho and Washington and into Oregon.
“Amazon is trying to hook up directly to these pipelines,” said Emily Johnston, a core organizer with Troublemakers.
The work in question is TC Energy’s Gas Transmission Northwest Xpress Project, which won federal approval in October and will expand compressor stations at Athol, Idaho; Starbuck, Washington, and Kent, Ore. The work would pump another 150 million cubic feet of natural gas each day.
Natural gas is a fossil fuel often billed as a cleaner way to shift toward renewable energy but a growing body of research indicates the gas can be just as harmful to the atmosphere as coal.
The increased reliance on natural gas is contrary to Amazon’s climate pledge, which promises that the company will largely decarbonize by 2040 and power its operations with 100% renewable energy by next year, protesters say.
Amazon’s emissions are higher than when the company made the pledge in 2019. The company has also faced accusations of “drastically” undercounting its total carbon footprint, according to a 2022 report by Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting.
Amazon spokesperson Lisa Levandowski said Wednesday the company has made “incredible progress on its path so far,” pointing to its fleet of electric delivery vehicles and its purchase of renewable energy. “Those are just a couple examples of how Amazon is working hard and investing to decarbonize its operations and become a more sustainable company.”
Amazon said last year its energy-related emissions are decreasing as the company continues to invest in renewable energy. In 2022, it had 401 renewable energy projects and enough capacity to power the equivalent of 5.3 million U.S. homes every year. Levandowski said Wednesday that Amazon is the largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy globally.
But using natural gas to power Amazon’s data centers would add an estimated 250,000 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year, the protesters said in a release.
Demonstrators demanded that the company commit to using only renewable energy at its data centers.
The protesters stood in front of Amazon for about an hour Wednesday morning. On Sixth Avenue, a group of protesters used cars to block the entrance to a garage and a line of bicycles to block foot traffic.
Lisa Morrow stood on the side of the street holding a sign that read “Climate Pledge Broken, Garage Closed.”
She has been protesting against climate change since the early 2000s. Not much has changed since then, she said.
“People talk the talk but they don’t walk the walk. It’s just more greenwashing,” she said. “I’m here because Amazon made a climate pledge and they have not only backed off, they have broken it.”
Meanwhile, Amazon employees stood on the lawn outside the building, holding jackets over their heads in the morning rain and asking one another about other entrances and missed meetings. Some ducked underneath protesters’ signs to enter, others took photos.
Amazon support technician Dawud Walk said he understood the protesters’ concerns but that the action was preventing him from getting to work.
“Everybody’s got to pay rent,” Walk said. “It just is what it is.”
At the same time, he said, company employees and everybody else are part of this world, and he expressed a desire for a safe and healthy environment.
Others were less understanding.
One man yelled at the protesters, flustered, and moved from one blocked door to another.
“We have jobs to get to,” he said. “We have meetings.”
“You’re forcing people out of their workplace,” another said. “This is the wrong approach.”
Amazon acknowledged that it would use that natural gas to generate about 24 megawatts of electricity (enough to power more than 19,000 homes) for its data centers in Boardman, Ore., documents filed with the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality show.
But that generation should be temporary, the company noted in the document.
Troublemakers aren’t the first to oppose the natural gas expansion project. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee spoke out against it in November. As did gubernatorial candidate and current Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson, who said the extra gas would be the same as adding 754,000 cars on the road.
Representatives from TC Energy did not respond to a request for comment. Shortly after 9 a.m. — about an hour after the blockade began — the protesters moved from their positions, allowing employees inside once more. Seattle Police Lt. Shaun Hilton said officers made no arrests and received no reports of injuries.
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