Amazon’s carbon emissions fell last year

Amazon’s carbon emissions decreased slightly in 2023 after the company increased renewable energy purchases and reduced pollution from construction, hardware and equipment, according to its latest report. sustainability report.

In 2019, Amazon committed to achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2040. Despite this goal, its carbon emissions increased shortly thereafter – rising from around 51 million metric tons of CO2 in 2019 to more than 71 million metric tons in 2021. It now appears that the company’s carbon footprint has decreased somewhat over the past two years, decreasing 3% in 2023 to just under 69 million metric tons of CO2.

For context, Amazon’s carbon footprint last year was approximately equivalent to the annual CO2 emissions of 184 gas-fired power plants. And the company is still emitting about 34% more carbon pollution than when it made its climate commitment in 2019. But it’s notable that Amazon’s emissions fell slightly in a year when other tech giants’ pollution soared with explosion of new AI. tools.

Amazon says the drop is mainly due to cleaning up carbon pollution from electricity use and indirect emissions from supply chains, which fell 11% and 5%, respectively. He also announced that he had achieved his goal of Coinciding 100% of its electricity consumption with renewable energy in 2023, seven years before the 2030 deadline.

Explaining what “matching” means can be a little complicated, but it’s important for understanding any company’s clean energy goals. Simply put, there is not yet enough renewable energy online to meet global climate goals, and diverting what is available to meet clean energy goals from a single giant company would be quite unfeasible. Furthermore, when a company connects to the grid, it does not control whether the electricity it uses comes from a solar farm or a fossil fuel power plant. Instead, companies typically pay to “match” their energy consumption with the Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) aimed at supporting renewable energy projects.

The quality of these RECs makes a difference. RECs may become so cheap that they are no longer a sufficient source of revenue to encourage new clean energy projects. As a result, many companies overestimated reductions in carbon emissions through RECs, to look for published in 2022 found. And what’s really needed to stop climate change are additional new sources of renewable energy.

To try to achieve this, other companies, including Microsoft It is Google, have set goals to match their electricity consumption with clean, locally generated energy on an hourly basis (instead of annually). This should support a future where there is enough renewable energy to count 24 hours a day, 7 days a week on any network a company connects to.

Another alternative is to join a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA), a long-term contract to support the development of a clean energy project and/or purchase electricity from it. Amazon is the largest corporate buyer of renewable energy, purchasing more solar and wind power through PPAs than Google and Microsoft combined, according to BloombergNEF.

By comparison, Google and Microsoft saw their greenhouse gas emissions rise by about 13 and 20 percent, respectively, last year as they incorporated AI into their products and services. Like Amazon, they have seen larger increases since setting climate targets several years ago. Microsoft’s carbon footprint was 30% higher in fiscal 2023 than in 2020, according to its latest sustainability report. Google’s carbon emissions were 48% higher in 2023 compared to 2019. Amazon is also bringing AI to Alexa and other services, but is reportedly struggling to catch up to other big players in the AI ​​race.

Amazon also saw a 13% drop in emissions from capital goods last year, such as noticed by Bloomberg. This includes things like construction and new servers, vehicles and other equipment. The company’s capital expenditures fell by about $10 billion in 2023, Bloomberg reports. The company grew during the Covid-19 pandemic, which caused its carbon emissions to skyrocket at the time. But after reducing storage and data center costs, your carbon emissions are also decreasing.