Amazon on Tuesday reported a slight drop in greenhouse gas emissions, a milestone that comes as climate change activists pressure the company to do more.
The company's carbon emissions dropped 0.4% in 2022 compared to 2021, but its total footprint remains millions of metric tons larger than past years, according to Amazon's sustainability report released Tuesday. Its carbon footprint totaled 71.3 million metric tons last year, down from the 71.5 million it recorded in 2021.
The modest decrease is a shift for the company, which saw carbon emissions grow by roughly 10 million metric tons annually between 2019 and 2021.
Kara Hurst, Amazon's vice president of worldwide sustainability, said the reversal indicates the company is "making the right decisions" as it works to reduce its impact on the climate. Amazon pledged in 2019 to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2040 as part of its Climate Pledge that now has 390 participating companies. Net zero broadly means reaching a balance between the greenhouse gases going into the climate and those coming out.
But Amazon has faced scrutiny for years as some say it is moving too slowly to change its operations, with some casting doubt on how the company calculates its carbon emissions and others questioning its commitment to reaching net zero. Activists have asked the company to move up its timeline for achieving the goal to 2030.
This month — ahead of the sustainability report and tied to Amazon's largest sales event of the year, Prime Day — a group of protesters painted a message to the company on the street outside its Seattle headquarters. Environmental advocacy group Stand.earth wrote to CEO Andy Jassy, "Amazon: Prime Polluter #Deliver Change."
Hurst said Amazon has invested in making its operators more sustainable by purchasing renewable energy to run its data centers, hydrogen-powered forklifts for its warehouses and battery-electric generators in its trailers on TV and movie sets. The effort to reduce Amazon's impact on the climate is not "linear," Hurst said, and some of the investments won't show results immediately.
"A lot of what you're seeing is our ability to take these big goals and embed them into our business day to day," Hurst said.
Hurst pointed to a 7% decrease in Amazon's carbon intensity, a measure of emissions per dollar of sales, as an indicator that the company is growing in a more sustainable way than in the past.
But Aseem Prakash, a political science professor at the University of Washington and the founding director of the Center for Environmental Politics, said carbon intensity isn't the most important measure. He is focused on absolute emissions, or the 71.3 million metric tons that Amazon reported for 2022.
"I think they're doing things that are positive ... but they can do better," Prakash said in an interview ahead of the report's release. "One expects more from a company that claims to be a climate leader."
Prakash hoped to get more detail on Amazon's net-zero carbon goal because, he said, companies, countries and organizations that commit to net zero can have a wide range of definitions for what the term means. "Net zero is like Swiss cheese," he said.
Amazon's direct emissions increased 11% in 2022. Amazon attributed the increase to its business growth, a change in how it calculates emissions and a shift in its transportation network. Amazon now moves more items through its own logistics network rather than third-party delivery partners, the company said in its report.
For that same reason, Amazon's emissions caused by vendors and other parts of the supply chain decreased 0.7% in 2022.
Amazon's energy-related emissions decreased 29% in 2022 as the company continued 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.
In 2022, 90% of the electricity consumed by Amazon was attributable to renewable energy sources. The company hopes to reach 100% by 2025.
Amazon has also worked to electrify its fleet of delivery vehicles, some equipment in its warehouses and some machines in its entertainment division.
On set, it has deployed battery-electric generators, solar-powered cast trailers and electric vehicles, and it is working to reduce its use of fossil fuels on production studios. Amazon acquired MGM in March 2022.
The company has 15,000 hydrogen-powered forklifts in its fulfillment centers in North America and signed a deal that promises to bring enough green hydrogen to fuel 40,000 forklifts by 2025.
It has deployed 5,000 Rivian electric delivery vans in the U.S. and another 4,000 electric delivery vehicles in its global fleet. It has pledged to put 100,000 Rivian vans on the road by 2030.
Next year, Amazon plans to update its supply chain standards to require its vendors and suppliers to share their own emissions data. Already, customers can filter through its online marketplace to find products that are "Climate Pledge Friendly" and vetted by third-party sustainability certifiers. There are 550,000 certified products on Amazon's site.
The sustainability report comes at a time when activists, shareholders and corporate employees are increasingly speaking out about Amazon's climate impact.
Amazon Employees for Climate Justice led workers in a walkout in 2019 to demand Amazon take the lead on addressing its impact on climate change with steps like cutting carbon emissions and eliminating funding for lobbying groups who block climate action.
Those same organizers helped coordinate a walkout in May, asking Amazon to put climate impact at the "forefront of our decision-making," according to a note to Amazon employees. Nearly 2,000 corporate workers pledged to participate in the May event.
Activists also recently called attention to Amazon's decision to quietly drop one of its climate goals, Shipment Zero, a pledge to make 50% of its deliveries net-zero by 2030.
Amazon said it decided to eliminate Shipment Zero after it announced the Climate Pledge, which is a more comprehensive effort. But Stand.earth, the group that painted the streets outside Amazon headquarters this month, took that decision as a signal that Amazon is prioritizing profits over sustainability.
