Prime Polluter

Five years on, Amazon’s Climate Pledge leaves a legacy of weak and broken promises in U.S. shipping and deliveries
Prime Polluter

Since 2019, Amazon has used the Climate Pledge to both distract from the growing dock-to-door emissions from its U.S. imports and deliveries, and to cheat its way to climate progress. While aiming to “meet the Paris Agreement 10 years early,” Amazon has sought to weaken emissions reduction targets with ineffective accounting tricks like carbon offsets. It has fought investors to avoid accounting transparency in an attempt to run down the clock. When confronted by climate leaders like the Clean Mobility Collective and the Ship It Zero campaign, Amazon has doubled down on its greenwashing and dismissed the concerns of community and civil society climate advocates.

So what do the five years since the launch of the Climate Pledge actually show us?

Key Findings

  • From 2019 to 2023, Amazon has increased its U.S. inbound and domestic air freight pollution by 67 percent (average annual growth of 15 percent), reflecting a deliberate decision to bypass emissions-reduction initiatives with an increased aviation focus. Last year, air freight generated more than 42 percent of the carbon emissions of a package’s journey in the United States.
  • From 2019 to 2023, Amazon’s delivery van carbon dioxide emissions grew 190 percent, and its heavy-duty truck emissions grew by 51 percent. Heavy-duty trucks comprise the second-largest share of U.S. dock-to-door emissions, with 37 percent of each package’s carbon output.
  • Amazon’s U.S. inbound and domestic marine shipping emissions increased 26 percent in 2023 as compared to 2019. The company has not announced plans for the transition of this sector to zero emissions.
  • In 2023, Amazon Logistics U.S. dock-to-door delivery pollution generated 5.8 million metric tons of carbon dioxide (+18 percent average year-over-year since 2019). Amazon’s emissions are projected to continue growing at a compound annual growth rate of 5.5 percent-11.5 percent through 2030.

It’s time for Amazon to drop the pretenses and step into the climate leadership it has been claiming for years. In July 2024, our planet experienced its warmest day in recent history. This runaway warming is attributable to increasingly more severe weather events that disproportionately impact the lives and livelihoods of the most vulnerable. There is a small and narrowing window of opportunity to avoid the worst consequences of climate change by limiting global warming below the important 1.5-degrees Celsius threshold

Explore the report

A joint investigation by Stand.earth Research Group (SRG), the Clean Mobility Collective (CMC), and the Ship it Zero (SiZ) campaign reveals Amazon’s greenhouse gas emissions increased approximately 25% since Amazon announced its Climate Pledge in 2019.

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