If Amazon doesn’t know how to eliminate carbon emissions, then who does?

Amazon’s chief sustainability officer said Tuesday the company doesn’t know how it will achieve its goal of net zero carbon emissions by 2040. ’” The admission was both frank and realistic. It’s also a bit disappointing. If Amazon doesn’t have a plan to decarbonize, then who does? Amazon is one of the largest companies in the world, with last year’s revenue up 12% to $717 billion — about the size of Ireland’s economy. Its rise is illustrative of how, as UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has pointed out, power has shifted from governments to a few corporations. As power moves, responsibility follows. The question is, how much responsibility does Amazon bear? “This isn’t a question of companies versus governments,” Hurst told TechCrunch in a written reply to questions after the event. ” It’s true that Amazon has not been sitting still. In her talk yesterday, Hurst pointed out that the company is “one of the largest purchasers of clean energy in the world for the last several years running” with 42 gigawatts in its portfolio. She also said that Amazon has reduced its carbon intensity, or how much pollution it generates per dollar of revenue, though that claim depends on the timeframe. Last year, carbon intensity rose compared with 2024, even though it stayed below where it was in 2022. Amazon is a sprawling business, and as a result, its carbon emissions are spread across nearly every sector of the economy, from aviation and AI to agriculture and construction. The company needs suppliers in every sector to achieve its goal. “This is not something we can do alone,” Hurst said at the Axios event. The company acknowledges that its commitments are its own. “We hold ourselves accountable to The Climate Pledge goal of net-zero carbon by 2040. That commitment hasn’t changed,” Hurst told TechCrunch. But Amazon has also made choices that undermine its leadership on the issue. 65 gigawatt natural gas power plant to power an AI data center campus. S. With few exceptions, companies prioritize revenue growth over climate commitments. For a company like Amazon, which operates the largest cloud service in the world, AI is apparently a revenue driver that’s impossible to pass up. The climate tech world has been hoping that, as clean power gets cheaper, the market would work its magic to lower carbon emissions. There have been a few success stories, but as the AI rush has shown, that approach has its limits. Even Amazon, one of the leaders in the space, bet big on natural gas. In the process, it essentially said that climate change is something for future generations of executives to deal with. Sound familiar? When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence. Tim De Chant is a senior climate reporter at TechCrunch. He has written for a wide range of publications, including Wired magazine, the Chicago Tribune, Ars Technica, The Wire China, and NOVA Next, where he was founding editor. De Chant is also a lecturer in MIT’s Graduate Program in Science Writing, and he was awarded a Knight Science Journalism Fellowship at MIT in 2018, during which time he studied climate technologies and explored new business models for journalism. He received his PhD in environmental science, policy, and management from the University of California, Berkeley, and his BA degree in environmental studies, English, and biology from St.