“Amazon prides itself on being an ambitious and innovative company, but it’s making a big deal of itself with the growth of its air cargo,” Archer says. “If Amazon is serious about climate change, there’s an easy place to start: stop flying so much.”
Amazon is no stranger to climate criticism. Its total emissions have soared since it rolled out the Climate Pledge in 2019, despite a gradual decline through 2023. Last year, Amazon lost the support of a major U.N.-backed global climate organization, the Science Based Targets Initiative, after it missed deadlines to set emissions-reduction goals; 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 behind its claim to have met a renewable energy target. In 2023, Amazon quietly scrapped a goal to make half of its shipments carbon neutral by 2030, a target it said was being replaced by the larger Climate Pledge.
Part of the problem with calculating Amazon's emissions is the scale of the challenges the company faces, thanks to its relentless vertical integration: the Wall Street Journal reported in May that, in an effort to expand control over its logistics operations, the company had already leased, purchased or announced plans to expand its U.S. warehouse space by 16 million square feet this year. Kelly said in an emailed response to WIRED’s request for comment that the company’s extensive logistics network allows it to deliver packages closer to their destinations and avoid long distances.
Reading the company’s sustainability report is an exercise in understanding a variety of different ambitious technical and sociological climate goals across industries involved in its supply chain. In response to WIRED’s request for comment, Kelly cited Amazon’s membership in two industry organizations that promote sustainable shipping, its membership in a buyers’ alliance that encourages the adoption of sustainable aviation fuel, and 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 does and takes air freight into their own hands,” Archer said. “You get a situation where a lot of people are flying a lot of planes.”
There’s a real question whether the company making significant changes wouldn’t simply be shifting emissions from one company’s balance sheet to another while the rest of the industry continues to grow. Atlas Air, a subcontractor to Amazon Air, announced in May that it would stop flying domestic Amazon parcels to focus on other customers, including Chinese e-commerce giants Shein and Temu.
Still, now that Amazon dominates such a large share of the U.S. market and has the capacity to start trends that other suppliers then follow, like expedited shipping, it has the opportunity to set an aggressive example, such as making a substantial effort to reduce the use of planes and helping the U.S. build infrastructure for more sustainable long-haul trucking. (The company did not provide figures on how much it has spent on partnerships, research, lobbying or other activities to decarbonize the U.S. trucking sector.)
And as for that big promise of electric vans? The Stand.earth report predicts that if Amazon’s current growth rates put all of the electric vans it’s promised on the road by the end of the decade, they’d 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 EVs to deliver all of its packages.
“The 100,000 vans in 2030 is far too few and far too late,” says Archer.
