Amazon says its carbon emissions fell for first time in 2022

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Amazon.com Inc.’s carbon emissions ticked lower for the first time since the company began reporting the figure, thanks to increased purchases of renewable electricity and a big slowdown in the retailer’s sales growth. The Seattle-based giant emitted 71.27 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2022, down 0.4% from the previous year, Amazon said in its annual sustainability report, published on Tuesday. The company achieved the improvement by using more solar and wind to power its operations and benefited from a decrease in emissions from construction and third-party transportation.

Amazon in recent years has been the biggest corporate buyer of renewable electricity, using power purchase agreements to fund development of new solar and wind farms across the globe. Emissions related to electricity purchases fell 29% last year. The company has pledged to wipe out or offset its contribution to the greenhouse gas emissions warming the planet by 2040 and invited other companies making similar commitments to join what it calls the Climate Pledge.

Emissions are up by about 40% since Amazon set the target in 2019, fuelled in part by supercharged sales during the pandemic. But Amazon says its carbon intensity, a measure of how much the company emits for every dollar of merchandise sold, is down 24% during the same period, thanks to the renewables push and the addition of about 9,000 electric vehicles to Amazon’s delivery fleet, among other factors. Slowing e-commerce growth also helped Amazon cut its carbon emissions for the first time.