Amazon says carbon emissions rose 18% in 2021 as Covid drove upsurge

Amazon’s carbon emissions jumped 18% past yr, as the firm reckoned with a pandemic-driven surge in e-commerce and grew its enterprise to fulfill that further desire.

In its once-a-year sustainability report issued Monday, Amazon said its functions emitted the equivalent of 71.54 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2021. Which is up 18% from 2020, and an enhance of just about 40% from 2019, the 12 months Amazon 1st commenced disclosing its carbon footprint.

Amazon decreased its carbon depth, which actions emissions for each greenback of sales, by 1.9% in 2021, as opposed with a 16% decrease in 2020.

The Covid-19 pandemic led to a enormous influx of orders at Amazon and other e-commerce firms. A lot of individuals, flush with stimulus examine cash, opted to do their procuring on line to prevent risking exposure to the virus.

That wave of demand from customers pushed Amazon to extend its logistics community of delivery vans, planes and vans. It also rapidly opened new warehouses to approach the stream of orders. Throughout the yr finished 2021, Amazon doubled the measurement of the success network it had created around the earlier 25 many years, the company stated.

The enterprise also included much more knowledge centers to guidance Amazon Net Companies, as the pandemic sped up corporations’ change to the cloud.

Amazon unveiled its “Local climate Pledge” in 2019. As element of the program, the e-commerce large has fully commited to be carbon neutral by 2040, and it bought 100,000 electric powered delivery vans from Rivian Automotive that it expects to have on the highway in the U.S. by 2030. It also introduced a $2 billion venture funds fund to commit in new climate technologies, partly so that they could be used to further more its sustainability ambitions.

Amazon’s weather file and the methods it measures its have environmental document have confronted scrutiny, nonetheless. A report before this year by Reveal from the Centre for Investigative Reporting found the firm, in contrast to main merchants this kind of as Goal and Walmart, only counts solution carbon emissions from the use of Amazon-branded products, and not those it purchases from manufacturers and sells specifically to the customer.

An Amazon spokesperson did not straight tackle the discrepancy in reporting, but reported the firm follows assistance from the Greenhouse Gasoline Protocol Company Accounting and Reporting Typical in analyzing its Scope 3 emissions, or emissions produced from a company’s source chain.

The spokesperson added that Amazon 3rd-party sellers “handle their individual carbon emissions accounting.”

View: View the 1st glance at Amazon and Rivian’s electric powered shipping vans