How Amazon's Sustainability Strategy uses Renewable Energy
It is estimated that Amazon ships more than 1,000 packages per minute worldwide.
This operational scale presents both a challenge and an opportunity for the company to significantly influence global sustainability goals.
Amazon's Sustainability Report for 2024 shows an increase in absolute emissions, but also highlights significant achievements across its ESG initiatives aimed at mitigating its environmental impact.
“Looking ahead, we recognise that the path to being a more sustainable company will never be linear, because we’re charting new territory at an unprecedented scale,” says Kara Hurst, Chief Sustainability Officer at Amazon, in the report.
“While we are firm on our goals, our approach will continuously evolve with emerging challenges and opportunities, as we’re seeing with the rapid adoption of AI.
"No matter what we’re faced with in the future, we’ll remain steadfast in our commitment to sustainability and will continue to invest, innovate and obsess over our progress each year, with the same intensity and focus that has defined Amazon from Day One.”
Amazon’s carbon and energy in 2024
Amazon has set an ambitious target to achieve net zero carbon emissions across its global operations by 2040.
However, in 2024, the company's emissions rose from 64.38 million tonnes of CO₂ equivalent (MTCO₂e) in 2023 to 68.25 MTCO₂e.
There was a decrease reported in its grams of carbon dioxide equivalent per dollar of gross merchandise sales, from 75.6g CO₂3/$GMS to 72.6g CO₂e/$GMS.
In 2023 the company reached its goal of matching 100% of electricity consumed by its global operations with renewable energy, which it continued in 2024.
By 2030, the e-commerce giant also plans to deploy at least 100,000 electric delivery vans, having already increased its fleet from over 19,000 to over 31,000 in 2024.
In India, Amazon achieved a strategic goal by deploying 10,000 electric vehicles before its 2025 target.
It met its goal of deploying 10,000 EVs in India by 2025 and has matched 100% of energy used by all active Echo, Fire TV and Ring devices worldwide with operational wind and solar capacity.
Through The Climate Pledge, co-founded by Amazon in 2019, the company hopes to inspire and empower others to join the company’s goal of reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2040.
In 2024, the number of signatories to the Pledge rose to 549.
Sally Fouts, Director of The Climate Pledge at Amazon, said on LinkedIn: “As a co-founder and signatory of The Climate Pledge, Amazon has helped build a framework for collective action and accountability.
“Reporting like this is a reminder that progress isn’t always linear—but it is essential. When businesses measure and report openly, they create clarity, trust and momentum for others to follow.”
AWS (Amazon Web Services) data centres achieved global power usage effectiveness of 1.15 compared to the industry average of 1.25.
Waste and circularity at Amazon
Amazon's physical operations have seen efforts to reduce waste and improve packaging practices.
In 2024, Amazon eliminated all plastic air pillows globally, replacing them with recyclable paper fillers, resulting in a 16.4% reduction in single-use plastic delivery packaging.
Amazon also achieved an 85% landfill diversion rate, an improvement over previous years.
Across the US and Europe, Amazon aims to reduce food waste by 50% by 2030 and donated the equivalent of 81 million meals in 2024.
Water is another focus area for the business with a new goal set in 2024 to return more water to communities in India than it uses in all direct operations by 2027.
In AWS, the company aims to be water positive by 2030 and has made 53% progress toward meeting this goal.
Amazon’s community impact
More than 21,000 affordable homes have been created or preserved through US$2.2bn of investment by Amazon, with the aim of increasing this to US$3.6bn for more than 35,000 homes.
AWS cloud computing credits have been distributed to support organisations promoting global health, meeting the company’s goal of US$60m in credits.
Free cloud computing skills training has been taken on by 31 million people and free AI skills training by more than two million people.
In underserved communities worldwide, more than 7.8 million students were reached by Amazon Future Engineer programmes.
