Amazon’s Carbon Emissions Broken Down
An analysis of Amazon's environmental impact, contrasting its public climate goals with the complexities and criticisms of its corporate emissions reporting.
As a global e-commerce and technology giant, Amazon’s operational scale results in a significant carbon footprint. The company’s network of fulfillment centers, delivery systems, and data infrastructure drives substantial energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. Understanding this environmental impact requires examining how it is measured, where the emissions originate, and the steps Amazon is taking in response.
Measuring Amazon’s Carbon Footprint
To understand a corporation’s climate impact, emissions are categorized using the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, a widely used international accounting standard. This standard divides emissions into three “scopes.” Scope 1 includes direct emissions from sources owned or controlled by the company, such as fuel burned in its fleet of delivery vehicles and on-site power generation.
Scope 2 covers indirect emissions from the generation of purchased energy. For Amazon, this involves the electricity bought to power its fulfillment centers, corporate offices, and data centers. These emissions are not created at Amazon’s facilities but are a direct consequence of its energy use from the public grid.
Scope 3 encompasses all other indirect emissions that occur in a company’s value chain. This is the most expansive and often the largest category, including emissions from the manufacturing of products sold on its platform, packaging, third-party distribution, and customer use of purchased devices. For many companies, these value chain emissions account for the majority of their total footprint.
In its 2023 sustainability report, Amazon disclosed a total carbon footprint of 68.82 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, a 3% reduction from the previous year. Approximately 75% of these emissions fall under Scope 3, underscoring the impact of its vast supply chain and the products it sells. While Scope 2 emissions from purchased electricity decreased, Scope 1 emissions from direct operations rose by 7% in 2023.
Key Emission Sources
Amazon’s carbon emissions are tied to its two main business pillars: e-commerce and cloud computing. The e-commerce side generates a large footprint through its global logistics network. This includes energy to operate hundreds of automated fulfillment centers and the production of packaging materials for shipping billions of items.
The transportation network to move these goods is another contributor, involving a system of air cargo, long-haul trucking, and last-mile delivery vans. While the company is investing in electric vehicles, the majority of this fleet still relies on fossil fuels. This generates direct emissions that are a component of its environmental impact.
A less visible source of emissions is Amazon Web Services (AWS), the company’s cloud computing division. AWS data centers power a large segment of the internet, from streaming services to corporate IT infrastructure. These facilities require immense amounts of electricity to run servers and for the extensive cooling systems needed to prevent overheating.
The energy demand for data centers is substantial, as a large facility can consume as much power as a small power plant. The rise of artificial intelligence has intensified these energy needs, since AI workloads require more power than traditional computing tasks. While Amazon reports its AWS infrastructure is more energy-efficient than typical on-premises data centers, the scale and growth of its cloud services make it a driver of the company’s electricity consumption.
The Climate Pledge and Mitigation Efforts
In response to its environmental impact, Amazon co-founded “The Climate Pledge” in 2019, setting a goal to achieve net-zero carbon emissions across its business by 2040. This commitment is ten years ahead of the Paris Agreement timeline, and more than 550 companies have since joined the pledge. To guide its efforts, Amazon is pursuing several strategies to reduce its emissions.
A primary focus is addressing its electricity consumption through investments in renewable energy, making it the largest corporate purchaser for four consecutive years. By investing in over 500 wind and solar projects, Amazon announced it matched 100% of its electricity use with renewable energy sources in 2023. This was achieved seven years ahead of its original 2030 schedule.
To tackle emissions from its delivery network, Amazon has invested in electric transportation. In 2019, the company ordered 100,000 electric delivery vehicles from Rivian, with plans to have them on the road by 2030. As of early 2024, more than 24,000 of these electric vans are in operation globally.
The company is also working to reduce waste and emissions from its packaging, reporting a 43% reduction in the weight of per-shipment packaging since 2015. It has been shifting to more sustainable materials. For instance, in North America, Amazon replaced 95% of its plastic air pillows with paper filler and transitioned to recyclable paper and cardboard packaging in its European network.
Controversies and Reporting Criticisms
Despite its public commitments, Amazon has faced scrutiny from environmental organizations, researchers, and its own employees. A main criticism is that the company’s absolute emissions have grown significantly since it launched The Climate Pledge in 2019, rising by 34.5% despite recent reductions. Critics argue that rapid business expansion has outpaced decarbonization efforts, making its net-zero goal more challenging.
The transparency of Amazon’s carbon accounting has also been questioned. Some reports accuse the company of undercounting its Scope 3 emissions by not including the full lifecycle emissions of all products sold on its platform. The criticism is that Amazon’s calculations only account for its “Amazon-branded” products, excluding the majority of emissions from third-party items.
The company’s renewable energy claims have also drawn criticism. While Amazon invests in enough renewable energy to match its consumption, that clean energy is fed into public grids, and its facilities still draw power from those grids, which include fossil fuels. Critics argue this method, which relies on purchasing renewable energy certificates, does not equate to running operations on 100% clean energy in real-time.