Amazon's Sustainability Chief: ‘We Have to Act Now' on Climate

(Bloomberg) — Companies that sign onto Amazon.com Inc.'s pact to eliminate carbon emissions often have to take a leap of faith that they'll find ways to make their operations more sustainable, even if the path isn't obvious, said Kara Hurst, the tech giant's sustainability chief.

"It's a huge commitment to sign on," Hurst said at the Bloomberg Green Festival in Seattle. She leads Amazon's sustainability work. The Amazon-backed Climate Pledge asks signatories to commit to reporting their carbon emissions and eliminating them by 2040. "Some of it is a bit of jumping into the fray and saying, 'We know some of how we're going to get there, and also we need to partner and figure out some of the ways in which we don't necessarily know.'"

That also describes Amazon's own efforts to eliminate its emissions, which began in earnest with a 2019 pledge from then-Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos that Amazon would eliminate its contributions to the greenhouse gasses warming the planet, and an open invitation for other companies to make the same commitment. Five years later, there are more than 500 signatories to the pledge, which is run in collaboration with Global Optimism, a climate advocacy group.

Amazon's own strategy for curbing emissions hinges on incorporating electric vehicles into its delivery fleet, as well as signaling support for efforts to clean up sectors of the economy — like air and sea transport, and steel and cement manufacturing — where clean technologies are not as well developed.

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Amazon reported earlier this week that its carbon emissions fell by 3% in 2023 as it cut spending on new construction of warehouses and data centers. The company's carbon intensity, a measure of how much it emits for every dollar in sales, is down by about a third since 2019. Amazon's total emissions are up 34% in that period.

"We don't have a lot of time," Hurst said. "We're in this decisive decade where we have to act now."