“Amazon prides itself on being an ambitious and innovative company, but it’s creating a lot of problems for itself with its growth in air travel,” says Archer. “If Amazon is serious about climate progress, there’s a really easy place to start: stop flying so much.”
Amazon is no stranger to climate criticism. Its overall emissions have shot up since the Climate Declaration was launched in 2019, despite a gradual decline in 2023. Last year, Amazon lost support key U.N.-backed global climate organization, the Science Based Targets Initiative, for missing certain deadlines for setting emissions reduction targets; it was one of nearly two dozen companies removed from the SBTI’s list of climate-conscious companies. In July, Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, a labor group, published a report criticizing the company’s calculations for its claim to have met its sustainable energy goal. In 2023, Amazon will quietly off the goal of half of supplies being carbon neutral by 2030 – a goal that the company sayswas replaced by the broader Climate Declaration.
Part of the problem in calculating Amazon’s emissions comes from the breadth of challenges it faces due to its intransigence. vertical integration:this Wall Street Journal reported in May to expand its control over logistics processes, the company has already leased, purchased or announced plans to expand its U.S. warehouse space by 16 million square feet this year. Kelly said in an email in response to WIRED’s request for comment that the comprehensive logistics network the company has built allows it to deliver packages closer to their destination and avoid long driving miles.
Reading the company’s sustainability report is an exercise in understanding the wide variety of ambitious technical and sociological climate goals across the industries involved in its supply chain. In response to WIRED’s request for comment, Kelly listed Amazon’s membership in two business organizations promoting sustainable shipping, membership in buyers alliance encouraging the adoption of sustainable aviation fuel and investing in electric trucks: in May, the company introduced 50 electric trucks on the road in Southern California.
“I think that creates a lot of challenges for the broader transportation industry if every company just does what Amazon did and makes air freight their own,” Archer says. “Then you’re going to have a situation where a lot of people are flying on a lot of planes.”
There is a real question of whether a company implementing significant changes would 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 discontinue domestic flights carrying Amazon packages in favor of focusing on other customersincluding Chinese e-commerce giants Shein and Temu.
Still, given Amazon’s dominance in the U.S. market—and its ability to start trends that other providers then follow, like expedited shipping—the company has an opportunity to set an aggressive example, such as by putting significant effort into reducing its operate of airplanes and helping the U.S. build infrastructure for more sustainable, long-distance trucking. (The company did not provide data on how much it has spent on partnerships, research, lobbying, or other efforts to decarbonize the U.S. trucking sector.)
And what about that flashy electric van commitment? Stand.earth’s report predicts that at Amazon’s current rate of growth, if the company puts all of its promised electric vans on the road by the end of the decade, that would still only account for a third of the company’s deliveries. If Amazon’s sales continue to grow at a rapid pace, it would need 400,000 electric vehicles to deliver all of its packages.
“100,000 vans by 2030 is too little, too late,” says Archer.