“Amazon prides itself on being an ambitious and innovative company, but it’s creating a huge problem for itself with the growth of its air cargo,” Archer said. “If Amazon is serious about climate progress, that’s a very easy place to start: stop flying so much.”
Amazon is no stranger to climate criticism. Its total emissions have it shot up since launching the Climate Commitment in 2019, despite an incremental drop in 2023. Last year, Amazon Lost support from a key UN-backed global climate organization, the Science Based Targets Initiative, for failing to meet certain deadlines for setting emissions reduction targets; it was one of nearly two dozen companies removed by SBTI from its list of climate-conscious companies. In July, Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, an employee group, published a report criticizing the company’s calculations around its claim that it had met a sustainable energy goal. In 2023, Amazon quietly deleted a goal of making half of its shipments carbon neutral by 2030, a goal that, The company saysIt was replaced by the broader Climate Pledge.
Part of the problem in calculating Amazon’s emissions is the magnitude of the challenges it faces, thanks to its tireless vertical integration: he The Wall Street Journal reported By May, the company had already leased, purchased or announced plans to expand its U.S. warehouse space by 16 million square feet this year, in order to expand its control over its logistics processes. 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 the company’s sustainability report is an exercise in understanding a variety of ambitious technical and sociological climate goals across 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 Promote sustainable maritime transport and its membership in a buyers alliance encouraging the adoption of sustainable aviation fuel and its investment in electric trucks: in May, the company launched 50 electric trucks on the road in Southern California.
“I think if every company did what Amazon did and brought air freight in-house, it would create a lot of challenges for the transportation industry as a whole,” Archer says. “Then you would end up with a situation where a lot of people would have to fly on a lot of planes.”
There is real doubt about whether a company that makes significant changes will simply shift emissions from one company’s balance sheet to another’s while the rest of the industry continues to grow. Atlas Air, a subcontractor for Amazon Air, announced in May that it would stop operating domestic flights carrying Amazon packages in favor of Focusing on other customersincluding Chinese e-commerce giants Shein and Temu.
But because Amazon dominates much of the U.S. market (and has the ability to drive trends that other providers will later follow, such as express shipping), the company has an opportunity to set an aggressive example, such as making a substantial effort to reduce the use of airplanes and helping the U.S. build infrastructure for more sustainable long-haul transportation. (The company did not provide figures for how much it has spent on partnerships, research, lobbying, or other activities to decarbonize the U.S. trucking sector.)
And what about that eye-catching promise of electric vans? Stand.earth’s report projects that at Amazon’s current rate of growth, if the company puts all the electric vans it promises on the road by the end of the decade, that would account for just one-third of the company’s deliveries. If Amazon’s sales continue to grow at the same rate, it would need 400,000 electric vehicles to deliver all of its packages.
“The 100,000 vans projected for 2030 is too little, too late,” says Archer.
