“Amazon prides itself on being an ambitious and innovative company, but it’s creating a problem for itself in air cargo growth,” Archer said. “If the Amazon is serious about climate change, that’s a very easy place to start: stop flying so much.”
Amazon is no stranger to climate criticism. Its total emissions have risen since it launched its Climate Pledge in 2019, despite increasing the reduction by 2023. Last year, Amazon lost support of a major UN-backed climate organization, Science Based Targets Initiative, due to failure to meet certain deadlines. set targets to reduce emissions; it is one of nearly two dozen companies SBTI has removed from its list of climate-conscious companies. In July, Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, an employee group, released a report criticizing the company’s calculations around its claim that it has met a sustainable energy goal. In 2023, Amazon quietly dropped a goal to make half of its shipments carbon neutral by 2030—a goal that, the company says, has been superseded by a larger Climate Pledge.
Part of the issue with calculating emissions for Amazon is how broad the challenges it faces are, thanks to its relentless vertical integration: the Wall Street Journal reported in May that to expand its control over its logistics processes, the company has leased, purchased or announced plans to expand its warehouse space in the US by 16 million square feet this year. Kelly said in an email in response to WIRED’s request for comment that the extensive logistics network the company has built allows it to deliver packages closer to their destination and avoid driving long miles.
Reading a company’s sustainability report is an exercise in understanding the various ambitious technical and sociological climate goals of the various industries involved in its supply chain. In response to WIRED’s request for comment, Kelly listed Amazon’s membership in two business organizations that promote sustainable shipping, its membership in a consumer alliance that encourages the use of sustainable aviation fuel, and the its investment in electric trucking: in May, the company put 50 electric trucks on the road in Southern California.
“I think it creates a lot of challenges for the broader transportation industry if every company just does what Amazon is doing and brings air freight home,” Archer said. “Then you will have a situation where many people are flying many planes.”
There is a real question as to whether the company making significant changes will simply transfer emissions from one company’s balance sheet to another while the rest of the industry continues to grow. Atlas Air, a subcontractor of Amazon Air, announced in May that it would stop domestic flights carrying Amazon parcels in favor of focusing on other customers, including Chinese ecommerce titans Shein and Temu .
However, since Amazon dominates much of the US market—and has the ability to start trends that other suppliers follow, such as expedited shipping—the company has an opportunity to set an aggressive example, such as by working to reduce airplane use. and helping the US build infrastructure for more sustainable long-haul trucking. (The company did not provide numbers on how much it has spent on partnerships, research, lobbying, or other activities to decarbonize the US trucking sector.)
As for the splashy electric van pledge? The Stand.earth report projects that at Amazon’s current growth rates, if the company puts all the electric vans it has promised on the roads by the end of the decade, that would still account for in a third of the company’s deliveries. If Amazon’s sales continue to grow, it will need 400,000 EVs to deliver all its packages.
“100,000 vans by 2030 is too little, too late,” Archer said.
