The Tricky Math in Amazon’s Climate Report

Amazon actually, actually needs you to assume it’s attempting on local weather.

The firm launched its 2021 sustainability report this week, the third yr in a row that it has logged its progress since committing to a web zero by 2040 aim in 2019. But hidden among the many slick pictures of wind generators and electrical supply vans are two language tips that present how Amazon could also be dragging its toes on actual progress. They’re a precious lesson in studying between the traces of company jargon.

At first look, it would appear to be all the things is hunky dory in Bezosland. “Even as we scaled our business at an unprecedented pace to help meet the needs of our customers through the pandemic, we saw a 1.9% reduction in our carbon intensity in 2021,” the report’s summary reads.

But the tech big’s general emissions truly rose in 2021, and rose by quite a bit. Emissions from their direct operations shot up an unlimited 26% between 2020 and 2021, whereas the corporate’s whole carbon footprint—combining emissions from each direct operations, electrical energy produced, and oblique sources—rose 18%. How, then, is the corporate capable of brag about reductions of any variety?

The satan right here is within the rhetorical particulars: using the phrase “carbon intensity” versus the thought of absolute emissions. In this context, carbon depth is the ratio of whole carbon emissions to {dollars} of gross merchandise gross sales; in different phrases, how a lot carbon Amazon emits for each unit of stuff it sells. There’s particular utility in measuring carbon depth. If an organization like Amazon is managing to make use of fewer emissions to get a package deal from door-to-door, that’s a superb factor to chart.

But runaway local weather change gained’t be fastened if all firms preserve turning their focus from absolute emissions. If Amazon is delivering an increasing number of packages, even at decrease intensities, it’s these emissions that can find yourself going into the environment. Focusing on carbon depth reasonably than absolute emissions is a trick utilized by companies—together with fossil gas firms—to convey progress on web zero targets after they’re truly upping their whole emissions.

“When assessing any corporate sustainability reporting, emissions intensity metrics can be useful, but they cannot replace the need for real progress towards targets that reduce emissions in absolute terms,” Johnny White, a climate accountability lawyer at environmental charity ClientEarth, told Earther in a statement. “This is for the simple reason that CO2 is cumulative in the atmosphere, and that is the metric we need to reduce globally and urgently.”

Then there’s Amazon Web Services, the company’s cloud computing subsidiary. It’s a profitable business for Amazon: the report states that “AWS grew its revenue by 37% year-over-year in 2021.” The company has also begun emphasizing the value AWS can bring to customers concerned about their carbon footprints, rolling out a carbon calculator earlier this year and claiming that, by 2025, when AWS is supposed to be running on all renewable energy, switching to the cloud platform could lower carbon footprints by 96% compared with competitors.

But AWS has a history of working with oil and gas companies, from big names like Exxon to smaller, lesser-known pipeline companies and oilfield services providers. AWS has positioned itself in past years as a key provider of services for fossil fuel producers: along with Microsoft, it headlined the industry conference CERAWeek in 2019—the same year Amazon created its Climate Pledge—and has maintained a significant presence at the conference since. While AWS’s former oil and gas-specific website now redirects to a website extolling the platform’s use in the more general “energy” space, there are still a multitude of fossil-fuel related case studies extolling AWS’s work on its website.

The carbon produced by services given to oil and gas companies should be factored into what are known as Scope 3 emissions, the emissions created from products and services Amazon provides to its customers. It’s not clear from this report if Amazon factors in the full impact of its services to fossil fuel producers into its Scope 3 emissions, or if it factors in some emissions from working with oil and gas companies, or if it omits them entirely. Included in the calculation of Scope 3 emissions is a section marked “other indirect emissions” that includes a mention of upstream emissions (this “other” category increased 14% between 2020 and 2021); there are no other details provided about calculations for this figure. Amazon didn’t respond to requests for more information about that line in the report or for information on how it factors in AWS’s work with oil and gas companies into its emissions calculations.

It’s not surprising that Amazon is being opaque here. The company has a history of caginess when it comes to Scope 3. An investigation published earlier this year by the Center for Investigative Reporting detailed how the company undercounts emissions from products it sells online. And these oil-and-gas contracts can have some real consequences. A assessment performed by Greenpeace on AWS competitor Microsoft discovered that that tech big’s work with fossil gas firms might add as a lot as 21% to the corporate’s bigger carbon footprint.

Decarbonizing one of many largest firms on the planet was by no means going to be a straightforward feat. But these two examples present the true problem of decarbonizing a capitalist entity intent on continued exponential development—Amazon’s revenue rose a jaw-dropping $469.8 billion in 2021, up 22% from the yr earlier than—and illustrating how an organization with a historical past of secrecy across the claims it’s making on local weather can fudge its numbers.

What good is a low-carbon software program platform if that platform is then getting used to create much more oil and gasoline? What good are lowering the emissions used to get a package deal to your door if the last word aim is to maintain rising the quantity of stuff we purchase yr after yr? These are questions which might be larger than Amazon itself, however the firm deserves scrutiny and extra public accountability because it wrestles with them.