Net-Zero Carbon by 2040
In 2019, Amazon co-founded The Climate Pledge – a commitment to achieve net-zero carbon emissions across our business by 2040 and to invite others to sign on to this new level of ambition. As part of our path to the Pledge, Amazon has made significant commitments towards reaching our goal:
"This is the start of a defining and decisive decade. The COVID-19 pandemic took millions of lives and dramatically impacted our families, our customers, our employees and our global value chain. But it has also brought about a moment of pause and an opportunity to reconsider the resilience of both humankind and our planet, making it clear how interconnected and interdependent we all are. By keeping the past year’s learnings in mind, we can successfully address societal shifts, avoid the worst impacts of climate change and meet the Sustainable Development Goals."

Kara Hurst
Vice President, Worldwide Sustainability
Environment
Like many companies and countries that invest in long-range goals, we know that the path to achieving net-zero carbon will be challenging, perhaps not following a linear progression from year to year. A goal of this scale requires bold commitments and innovation to transform our entire business over a prolonged period of time, along with perseverance and daily actions by business leaders. Across our company, we are laying the groundwork for the next 20 years of accelerated progress, starting with real-time carbon reporting structures to equip teams with actionable data and help them reduce carbon emissions in every part of our business.
At the same time, we are making significant investments in both proven and emerging technologies to address the largest contributors to our carbon footprint – deploying new renewable energy projects, electrifying our fleet of delivery vehicles, retrofitting buildings and more. We are also helping to build a cross-sector community of companies, organisations and partners through The Climate Pledge to collectively solve the challenges of decarbonising our economy.
At the same time, we are making significant investments in both proven and emerging technologies to address the largest contributors to our carbon footprint – deploying new renewable energy projects, electrifying our fleet of delivery vehicles, retrofitting buildings and more. We are also helping to build a cross-sector community of companies, organisations and partners through The Climate Pledge to collectively solve the challenges of decarbonising our economy.
- 2020World’s largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy
Became the world’s largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy and reached 65 % renewable energy across our business
- The Climate Pledge FundLaunched The Climate Pledge Fund, a 2 billion USD investment programme to support the development of sustainable and decarbonising technologies and services, and invested in several visionary companies
- Climate Pledge FriendlyLaunched Climate Pledge Friendly, a new programme to help make it easy for customers to discover and shop for more sustainable products, and certified 75,000 products as Climate Pledge Friendly
- Electric Delivery VehiclesDelivered more than 20 million packages to customers in electric delivery vehicles across North America and Europe in 2020
- Sustainable DevicesLaunched our most sustainable devices to date and committed to building new renewable energy projects until we account for the energy consumption of all Amazon devices
- Climate Pledge ArenaSecured the naming rights to Climate Pledge Arena and submitted registration to become the world’s first net-zero-carbon-certified arena
People
Our commitment to a sustainable future depends upon the people who support our value chain each and every day – from the factory workers who make the products we sell, to the associates in our fulfilment centres, to the drivers who deliver packages to our customers. We are committed to ensuring that our employees, workers and communities are treated with dignity and respect. While these fundamental values have been long-held at Amazon, in 2019, we codified them into a set of Human Rights Principles, reaffirming our commitment to human rights and outlining our approach across all aspects of our business.
In 2020, we built upon this commitment initiating a human rights saliency assessment in accordance with the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. The results of this assessment help us prioritise key areas where we have the greatest opportunity to have a positive impact on workers and communities. We know we have more to do, and we are committed to continuously widening our lens to better understand the potential human rights impacts of our business.
In 2020, we built upon this commitment initiating a human rights saliency assessment in accordance with the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. The results of this assessment help us prioritise key areas where we have the greatest opportunity to have a positive impact on workers and communities. We know we have more to do, and we are committed to continuously widening our lens to better understand the potential human rights impacts of our business.
- 20202 Billion USD for Housing EquityLaunched a 2 billion USD Housing Equity Fund to preserve and create more than 20,000 affordable homes in the US
- Pay EquityWomen at Amazon earnt 100.0 cents for every dollar that men earnt performing the same jobs, and minorities earnt 99.2 cents for every dollar that white employees earnt performing the same jobs
- Racial JusticeTogether with our employees, Amazon donated more than 27 million USD through an employee match programme to organisations working to bring about social justice and improve the lives of Black and African Americans
- Employing VeteransEmployed more than 40,000 veterans and military spouses, surpassing our goal of 25,000 by 2021
- Human Trafficking TrainingTrained 100 % of our internal fleet of drivers to identify and respond to potential victims of human trafficking they might encounter on the road through the Truckers Against Trafficking curriculum, achieving our 2020 goal
- Human RightsConducted Amazon’s first human rights saliency assessment to help us further identify, prioritise and design initiatives to advance our human rights commitments
COVID-19 Response
We are proud of the progress we made towards our sustainability goals and commitments in 2020, a year of unprecedented challenges for our world. Since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, we worked non-stop to make hundreds of changes to our operational processes to protect the health of our employees and communities. We invested more than 11.5 billion USD in COVID-related initiatives, with safety measures, supplies and special benefits for our front-line employees.
When jobs were lost during the pandemic, Amazon helped get people back to work: we recruited 500,000 new employees, whose jobs in hospitality, restaurants, travel and other industries had been lost or furloughed. To support the communities that we are proud to call home, we donated millions of dollars in cash grants and in-kind contributions to local businesses and organisations fighting the COVID-19 outbreak across the globe.
When jobs were lost during the pandemic, Amazon helped get people back to work: we recruited 500,000 new employees, whose jobs in hospitality, restaurants, travel and other industries had been lost or furloughed. To support the communities that we are proud to call home, we donated millions of dollars in cash grants and in-kind contributions to local businesses and organisations fighting the COVID-19 outbreak across the globe.
- 202011.5 billion USD on COVID-19-related measures
Provided more than 2.5 billion USD in bonuses and incentives for our teams globally, part of the 11.5 billion USD we invested in COVID-19-related measures overall in 2020
- Relief Fund for PartnersEstablished a 25 million USD relief fund for partners and seasonal associates facing financial hardship or quarantine during the COVID-19 pandemic
- AWS Diagnostic Development InitiativeLaunched the 20 million USD AWS Diagnostic Development Initiative to accelerate COVID-19 research
- Process UpdatesMade hundreds of process updates, including enhanced cleaning and social distancing measures, across operations worldwide
- Personal Protective GearDistributed personal protective gear, including millions of masks for employees