Amazon’s chief sustainability officer said Tuesday the company doesn’t know how it will achieve its goal of net zero carbon emissions by 2040. It’s also a bit disappointing. If Amazon doesn’t have a plan to decarbonize, then who does?
Amazon is one of the largest companies in the world, with last year’s revenue up 12% to $717 billion — about the size of Ireland’s economy. Its rise is illustrative of how, as UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has pointed out, power has shifted from governments to a few corporations. As power moves, responsibility follows.
The question is, how much responsibility does Amazon bear? In her talk yesterday, Hurst pointed out that the company is “one of the largest purchasers of clean energy in the world for the last several years running” with 42 gigawatts in its portfolio. She also said that Amazon has reduced its carbon intensity, or how much pollution it generates per dollar of revenue, though that claim depends on the timeframe.
Last year, carbon intensity rose compared with 2024, even though it stayed below where it was in 2022. Amazon is a sprawling business, and as a result, its carbon emissions are spread across nearly every sector of the economy, from aviation and AI to agriculture and construction. The company needs suppliers in every sector to achieve its goal.
The company acknowledges that its commitments are its own. That commitment hasn’t changed,” Hurst told TechCrunch. But Amazon has also made choices that undermine its leadership on the issue.
Earlier this year, an investigation revealed the company’s plans to build a 7.65 gigawatt natural gas power plant to power an AI data center campus. The project’s 35 turbines could release up to 33 million tons of carbon dioxide annually, making it the largest single source of that pollution in the U.S. With few exceptions, companies prioritize revenue growth over climate commitments.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
