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Amazon Web Services plans a wind farm in North Carolina that will help power Amazon data centers. The wind farm is expected to generate 670,000 megawatt-hours per year after it comes online at the end of 2016. Amazon's goal is to eventually power its operations using 100% renewable energy

Amazon Web Services says it will source 100 percent renewable energy for its global infrastructure. The company doesn't give a timeframe for achieving this goal. Read more: http://www.environmentalleader.com/2014/11/21/amazon-commits-to-100-renewable-energy/#ixzz3LXdAxhVd

Amazon has signed a 13-year agreement to buy wind power from Pattern Energy's 150-megawatt wind farm in Benton County, Ind. The Fowler Ridge wind farm will be renamed the Amazon Web Services Wind Farm and is expected to begin operations as soon as January 2016.

British shoppers could be unknowingly buying wooden furniture, flooring and even food items that are byproducts of destructive illegal logging in the Amazon, environmental campaigners are warning. Friends of the Earth is calling on ministers to make companies reveal the source of their products in order to stop the black market trade. Last week human rights watchdog Global Witness revealed that 185 environmental activists were killed in 2015, many of whom had been trying to stop illegal logging in the Amazon. An estimated 80% of Brazilian hardwood is illegally logged.

Tech giants Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon have submitted a joint brief to the Washington, D.C. Circuit Court in support of the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan.

Amazon intends to install solar power panels at more than 50 warehouses and distribution centers worldwide, including 15 this year in the US. The company estimated power generation of as much as 41 megawatts of by year's end.

Between August 2012 and June 2013, 1,855 square kilometers of the Brazilian Amazon were lost, a yearly increase of 103%. Degradation, where the forest appears intact but has been stripped of many commercial woods, increased 1,078%, albeit over a much smaller area. 

Just as it was being called out for using the dirtiest mix of energy among Internet giants, Amazon Web Services  announced this week a deal to build an 80-megawatt solar farm to power its east coast data centers. It will invest $150 million towards construction of a solar farm in Virginia where the majority of its data centers exist - and where the incumbent utility Dominion Virginia relies on fossil fuels for all but 2 percent of its generation. 

Greenpeace is launching a new ClickClean ad campaign aimed at persuading tech companies such as Amazon and Twitter to buy more of their energy from renewable sources. A previous campaign persuaded Google, Facebook and Apple to boost their green-energy purchases

Amazon Pledges 50% 'Net Zero Carbon' Deliveries by 2030

The deforestation consequences of ever-expanding agriculture is well understood. New research suggests that what is less well known is the impact from other industrial practices, including mining, particularly in the Amazon region. In a push for development and growth, governments have been scrambling to reap the economic benefits of extracting large amounts of metal ores, with the deforestation associated with such development in areas of ancient virgin forest more serious than previous thinking suggested, according to a new study.

Colombia's supreme court granted protections, filed by 25 children and other young people, that affirm that deforestation in the Colombian Amazon violates their rights to health and life. In the ruling, the supreme court ordered the president of Colombia and environmental authorities to create an action plan to protect this important natural area.

Amazon has installed the largest rooftop solar system in the state of New Jersey at its warehouse in Carteret, New Jersey. The 5 MW rooftop system features 20,000 solar panels

British fast food restaurants and grocery chains, including Tesco, Morrisons and McDonald's, buy their chicken from Cargill, which feeds its poultry with imported soy, much of it apparently coming from the Bolivian Amazon and Brazilian Cerrado - areas rapidly being deforested for new soy plantations.

Amazon Web Services unveiled five new solar projects in Virginia, totaling 180 MW of renewable energy capacity. The projects include four 20 MW solar farms, and one 100 MW facility. The projects will be operational before the end of 2017.

Demand for soy and other crops grown in Bolivia and Brazil may be contributing to a rise in deforestation in the Amazon basin. In Bolivia, for example, estimates are that 865,000 acres of land have been deforested annually since 2011, up from 667,000 acres a year during the previous decade.

Deforestation in the world's largest rainforest jumped 29 percent over last year, representing a sharp increase over the historically low deforestation rate seen just five years ago and the highest level recorded in the region since 2008, reports the Brazilian government. The numbers, released by Brazil's National Space Research Institute INPE on Monday, show that 7,989 square kilometers of rainforest were destroyed between August 2015 and July 2016. The loss is equivalent to an area 135 times the size of Manhattan or the combined land mass of the American states of Connecticut and Delaware.

By teaming up with The Nature Conservancy, this leading agricultural company has helped to mitigate deforestation in Brazil

According to the Brazilian NGO's analysis of satellite data, 1,373 square kilometers of rainforest was chopped down between August 2014 and December 2014, a 224 percent increase relative to the prior corresponding period a year before. Forest degradation from selective logging and fires is pacing 664 percent ahead of last year. Forest degradation typically precedes outright clearing.

A soy moratorium imposed by a private sector alliance has been more effective at stopping deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon than government regulation