Amazon.com Inc.'s CEO Jeff Bezos announced Sept. 19 the company's new Climate Pledge, with plans to become carbon neutral by 2040 and meet the goals of the 2016 Paris Agreement on climate change a decade early.
The announcement, made by Bezos at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., comes one day before protests by more than 1,000 Amazon workers who are planning a walkout Sept. 20 as part of a global climate strike, according to CNN.
As part of its pledge, Amazon also said it has committed to relying on 80% renewable energy across all business operations by 2024, and 100% renewable energy sources by 2030. The company plans to invest $100 million in reforestation projects to remove carbon from the atmosphere.
Amazon is also ordering 100,000 electric delivery vehicles from electric vehicle startup Rivian Automotive LLC. The vans will start delivering packages to customers in 2021.
Bezos said in a statement that the company is "done being in the middle of the herd on this issue — we've decided to use our size and scale to make a difference."
"If a company with as much physical infrastructure as Amazon — which delivers more than 10 billion items a year — can meet the Paris Agreement 10 years early, then any company can," he said.
Bezos said he has been talking to CEOs of other global companies and "finding a lot of interest in joining the pledge."
Companies that sign the agreement must measure and report greenhouse gas emissions regularly; implement decarbonization strategies in line with the Paris climate accord; and neutralize any remaining emissions with additional offsets to achieve net-zero annual carbon emissions by 2040.
Amazon said it has already made significant investments in renewable energy, including the launch of 15 utility-scale wind and solar renewable energy projects that will generate over 1,300 megawatts of renewable capacity and deliver more than 3.8 million megawatt-hours of clean energy annually — enough to power 368,000 U.S. homes.
President Donald Trump confirmed June 1, 2017, that he would initiate a U.S. withdrawal from the Paris climate pact, saying that the agreement is a "bad deal" for Americans.
As part of the pact, the U.S. had agreed to cut its economy-wide greenhouse gas emissions by 26% to 28% from 2005 levels by 2025.
