Amazon has signed a new deal with Plug Power to buy liquid green hydrogen to help decarbonize its operations, Plug Power announced in a press release on August 25.
As part of the deal, Plug Power will supply 10,950 tons of liquid green hydrogen per year to fuel Amazon operations starting January 1, 2025.&nbsp;
That’s enough hydrogen to power 30,000 forklifts or 800 long-haul trucks for a year.
Hydrogen is touted by some as having the potential to decarbonize emissions, like those coming from long-haul transport or heavy industry. Producing hydrogen requires energy that remains stored in the hydrogen itself, and is released when the gas is consumed, emitting only water molecules as a byproduct.
But while burning hydrogen is perfectly carbon-free, producing hydrogen can be carbon intensive because it requires energy to split water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen atoms—a process known as electrolysis. How clean the hydrogen is depends on the kind of energy used to generate it.
Green hydrogen, the object of the Amazon and Plug deal, is obtained by powering electrolysis exclusively from renewable sources like wind, water or solar, and is therefore also clean energy.
“Amazon is proud to be an early adopter of green hydrogen given its potential to decarbonize hard-to-abate sectors like long-haul trucking, steel manufacturing, aviation, and ocean shipping,” said Kara Hurst, vice president of Worldwide Sustainability at Amazon.
As part of the deal, Amazon also obtained the right to buy 16 million Plug shares. The tech giant often retains this kind of right when it signs major deals with smaller companies to get a piece of the market boost its counterparts receive for having partnered with one of the world’s biggest companies.
<h2>Amazon &amp; Plug Power</h2>
This is not Amazon’s first deal with Plug Power. Plug has supplied Amazon with hydrogen fuel cells—to replace the batteries in its distribution centers’ forklifts—since 2016.&nbsp;
“By building a complete hydrogen ecosystem from molecule to applications combined with a resilient network of green hydrogen plants around the world, we have made hydrogen adoption easy,” said Andy Marsh, CEO of Plug Power.
Amazon announced its climate goals in 2019, pledging to reach net zero by 2040. But its emissions have risen as much as 40% since then, a company report said in early August.
Amazon emitted 51.17 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) in 2019. But its emissions went up to 60.64 million tons in 2020 and 71.54 million tons in 2021—more than the emissions of Greece, Peru and Norway and nearly as much as Bangladesh, a country home to about 165 million people.&nbsp;
Amazon said in the report it aims to reach 100% renewable energy consumption in its operations by 2025. The company has also recently signed a deal with Rivian to buy 100,000 electric vehicles through 2030 to decarbonize its deliveries.
Further questions have recently been raised about Amazon’s purported green credentials. In February 2022, the tech giant was accused of “drastically undercounting” its emissions by Reveal News, which reported that Amazon counts only the carbon emissions generated by Amazon products sold on its site as part of its carbon footprint—but not those sold by other companies on its platform. The problem is that Amazon products make up just 1% of all products sold on the platform. By not counting the latter two categories, Amazon appears to be declaring just the tip of the iceberg of its carbon emissions, Reveal News alleged.
Plug Power is one of the United States’s leading providers of hydrogen and related technology. It specializes in building hydrogen production, storage and delivery systems, as well as in liquid hydrogen fuel cells to replace conventional batteries, for example in forklifts. The company says it has already deployed more than 50,000 hydrogen fuel cells and 165 fueling stations across the world.
To keep up with demand for green hydrogen, which Plug says is rapidly increasing from Amazon and other customers, the company said it hopes to achieve the capacity to produce 70 tons of green hydrogen per day by the end of 2022. The company says it is currently on track to reach a production capacity of 500 tons of green hydrogen per day in North America by 2025 and 1,000 tons per day globally by 2028.

Amazon has signed a new deal with Plug Power to buy liquid green hydrogen to help decarbonize its operations, Plug Power announced in a press release on August 25.

Amazon Signs Green Hydrogen Deal to Help Decarbonize Operations

Apple will invest in the development of a new renewable energy plant in Australia to compensate for the emissions generated by consumers charging their Apple devices.
In a press release published on August 11, the company said it would invest in the Upper Burdekin Wind Farm in Queensland, Australia, as part of its plan to achieve carbon neutrality across its value chain.
By the time the wind farm becomes operational in 2026, it should provide enough energy to power some 80,000 homes. Apple will also receive energy from the wind farm.
“We recognize the urgent need to address the climate crisis, and we’re accelerating our global work to ensure our products have a net-zero climate footprint across their entire life cycle,” Lisa Jackson, Apple’s vice president of environment, policy, and social initiatives, said in the press release.&nbsp;
“We are proud to play a part in Australia’s transition to a cleaner energy grid, and thrilled that Apple will soon support Australian customers’ use of their favorite products with clean energy.”
Apple says its operations have been carbon neutral since 2018 when they first became completely powered by renewable energy, according to the Wall Street Journal.
But operations cover only a portion of a company’s emissions, known in technical terms as Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions.
Scope 1 emissions are those generated by assets owned by an organization, like its offices. Scope 2 emissions are created indirectly, for example, by the power plant it purchases electricity from.
But to achieve carbon neutrality, companies also have to cut or balance out their Scope 3 emissions, those generated across their value chains—by suppliers, employees and customers using its products. For a company like Apple, its suppliers, deliveries and customers’ use of energy to power products are likely to make up a substantial chunk of its carbon footprint.&nbsp;
Apple’s latest green energy investment in Australia is the company’s latest step to inch closer to achieving neutrality across its Scope 3 emissions.
In its 2020 Environmental Progress Report, Apple announced plans to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030—including for Scope 3 emissions. The company said it would cut emissions by 75 percent by that year and develop innovative ways to counterbalance the remaining 25 percent of its footprint.
The Queensland wind farm is Apple’s second investment aiming to address the Scope 3 emissions generated by customers charging their devices. In April 2022, Apple also announced it would fund the development of a 2,300-acre solar project in Brown County, Texas.&nbsp;
Apple announced its investment on the 40th anniversary of its arrival in Australia alongside other social responsibility projects. The company said it would also work with local universities to expand coding education programs and create new partnerships with Australian indigenous-led nonprofits in indigenous communities to advance equity and opportunity.
“We’re proud to celebrate Apple’s long history in Australia, and to deepen our shared commitment to protecting the planet and creating opportunity in people’s lives,” Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, said in the press release. “We’ll continue working together to make the world a more equitable and just place for all.”

Apple will invest in the development of a new renewable energy plant in Australia to compensate for the emissions generated by consumers charging their Apple devices.

Apple Invests in New Wind Farm in Australia to Address Device Charging Emissions

(Ford CEO Jim Farley. Photo via Ford.)
Ford and Detroit-based energy company DTE have entered a purchase agreement for 650 megawatts of new solar power, the automaker announced in an August 10 press release.
The American automaker said the new solar power installations—the company isn’t tapping into an existing supply—will enable it to match 100% of the electricity consumption at its Michigan-based factories with renewable energy purchases by 2025. According to the press release, this is the largest renewable energy purchase ever made in the United States from a utility company.&nbsp;
“This unprecedented agreement is all about a greener and brighter future for Ford and for Michigan,” said Jim Farley, Ford’s president and CEO, in the press release. “Today is an example of what it looks like to lead … to turn talk into action.”
Ford estimates that it will avoid 600,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions once the installed solar panels are fully operational. These emissions fall under the category of Scope 2, which are indirect emissions caused by the purchase of power. According to Ford’s 2021 climate change report, its 2020 North American Scope 2 emissions were 1,887,669 million tons of CO2. In addition to the United States, Ford also has manufacturing plants in Mexico and Canada.
Ford is entering into what is known as a power purchase agreement (PPA) with DTE, which encourages utilities to build new renewable energy projects by securing demand for the energy in advance. PPAs are typically used by massive companies—Google is a major proponent of them—to boost local supplies of renewable energy.&nbsp;
Ford’s deal with DTE doesn’t mean that every lightbulb at its nine Michigan factories will be powered by solar energy. That’s because the grid itself doesn’t have separate power lines for renewable energy and energy from coal-fired power plants. It’s all mixed together, meaning the best Ford can do is match its total energy consumption with corresponding green energy purchases from local sources.
<img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/iDEM3jSaN-LII3OzOuFPThmwohYuEPoNHkIXFEU3DHdfOU0N3qVpSMTII-UcR86gV8vWw_BzF3T8V4JnSqba3SHK2PHQmgSXeJsb6F1wOUziXQjkx045F08p7W3oPk1IdALW_edB3cmL62LLlbXIcPA" width="624" height="416" loading="lazy">
(The Porsche Experience Center in Atlanta. Photo via Jaime Castrillon for Unsplash.)
<h2>Porsche Signs Deal for On-site Solar Microgrid</h2>
In addition to Ford, German luxury automaker Porsche also recently announced a deal to secure more solar energy to power its American operations. That said, Porsche is taking a much different tactic.
Porsche has struck a deal with renewable energy provider Cherry Street Energy (CSE) to install a solar microgrid at its North American headquarters in Atlanta, the automaker announced in a press release on August 15.&nbsp;
In the press release, Porsche said the new microgrid would generate 2,050 megawatt-hours of electricity annually, enough power to supply 191 average American homes for a year. According to Porsche, the microgrid will provide “a significant portion” of its annual energy needs once it’s completed in 2023.&nbsp;
“This solar project contributes to the overall sustainability targets of Porsche,” said Kjell Gruner, president and CEO of Porsche Cars North America, in the press release. “In 2030, Porsche aims to be CO2 net neutral across the entire value chain and life cycle of newly sold vehicles.”
Porsche said the microgrid will lead to an estimated reduction of 3.2 million pounds of CO2 per year, or 3.6 million miles of driving by the automaker’s estimate. Emissions are measured in tons, though, and Porsche’s microgrid will lead to a savings of 1,600 tons of CO2 per year.
It’s important to note that, unlike Ford, Porsche will be able to guarantee that a specific portion of the electricity powering its Atlanta HQ is renewable. This is because its microgrid is directly connected to its facilities, although it is also connected to the general grid.
The microgrid installation will take the form of solar panels placed atop Porsche’s existing and planned buildings. In addition to its corporate headquarters, the Atlanta site is also home to the Porsche Experience Center, a racing track where drivers can take lessons; and a service center. A second Experience Center is currently being built and a restoration center for classic Porsches is also planned.
CSE will own and operate the grid, selling the power to Porsche at what the press release referred to as “stabilized rates” for 25 years.

Ford and Detroit-based energy company DTE have entered a purchase agreement for 650 megawatts of new solar power, the automaker announced in an August 10 press release.

Ford, Porsche Each Announce New Renewable Energy Deals

(Photo by Pawel Czerwinski for Unsplash.)
Alphabet, the parent company of Google, has spent more than $5 billion on green energy projects since 2020 according to its recently released “2022 Sustainability Bond Impact Report.”
The report provides specifics regarding Alphabet’s $5.75 billion sustainability bond, which was announced in August of 2020. A sustainability bond is nearly identical to a corporate bond. Investors purchase bonds from the issuing company, giving it the capital needed to fund projects or make investments. In return, they receive periodic interest payments and have their initial investment repaid in full once the bond reaches maturity. In the case of a sustainability bond, the issuing company&nbsp; uses the money to invest in projects that advance environmental and social causes.
The new report reveals the categories those environmental and social causes fall into for Alphabet: energy efficiency, clean energy, green buildings, clean transportation, circular economy and design, affordable housing, commitment to racial equity and support for small businesses and Covid-19 crisis response.
Of those eight categories, the lion’s share of the funding went to energy-related projects, with “green buildings,” “clean energy” and “energy efficiency” snapping up $5.24 billion in funding—about 91% of the total amount.&nbsp;
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<img src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/eUUeGsZCGF_Q_551SxGWoUJenPVpMvWb9XaTMasFAVBBdqFXBwo2I_qwsW6aQZ5k_GJccJwrvHxdkZkINRcYjBxY7yMDd-yolvTvOU4zZmWFaCk95h9vjDPLGDdBfHQT7XcU4Lxj0re907LiE1-KS95Y-cTlRSCHojPmBZtdMXg1WU6a56MPRXBL3Q" width="624" height="416" loading="lazy">
(A Google office. Photo via Google.)
<h2>Green Buildings</h2>
According to the report, projects in the green buildings category include the “design, construction and improvements of office spaces and surrounding communities.” Alphabet said in the report that funds from the bond went toward the construction of seven new buildings, which includes new offices in London and Munich. Another seven buildings received funding from the bond for energy efficiency improvements.&nbsp;
That the buildings are truly “green” is attested by the LEED Platinum certification, which Alphabet said all buildings funded by the bond are on track to receive. LEED stands for “Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design” and is the world’s most widely used green building rating system.
Platinum is the highest level of LEED certification available, and according to a database maintained by the U.S. Green Building Council, which developed the LEED certification, just 9,469 buildings worldwide have reached “platinum” status.&nbsp;
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<img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/BUFoyUkm3sMvyJOUv1LNg9Y1wA3STXM2WUTmsXH5V3AgLyPucq3ODFV2mmh7H5ZYX336aUest2ugdg9140YNUFoX3MoEWnAsB8qdlrUkUBQv9s0_LZFBvKrcaE_6AP-XxApd8MhQCGu3EtVHEOGkY2Z7Io6pNbMdamplo9trSI0fwwj59-oSWSfLqA" width="624" height="415" loading="lazy">
(A solar farm. Photo by the American Public Power Association for Unsplash.)
<h2>Clean Energy</h2>
Alphabet directed $1.75 billion from its sustainability bond to clean energy, specifically power purchase agreements (PPAs). A PPA encourages utility or green energy companies to build new renewable energy projects by securing demand for the power in advance.&nbsp;
Alphabet said it has signed a total of 45 PPAs on three different continents that together generate a combined 5.3 gigawatts of power. A November 2021 CNET explainer on gigawatts notes that just one is enough to power 750,000 homes.
Alphabet’s most well-known company, Google, has a goal to match the 24/7 electricity consumption of its offices and data centers worldwide with renewable energy purchases by 2030.&nbsp;
If Google can achieve its goal, it won’t necessarily mean that every kilowatt of electricity it consumes will come from a renewable energy project. That’s because the grid combines power from all the producers connected to it, making it impossible to know whether the energy powering a server or lightbulb was produced at a coal-fired power plant or a solar farm.&nbsp;
Unless a company directly builds power lines between its buildings and renewable energy installations, the best it can do is match every kilowatt of electricity consumed with a corresponding purchase from a local green power company. PPAs are a way of ensuring that supply exists.
In its sustainability report, Alphabet estimated that its 45 PPAs combined will help the company avoid nearly 25 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions.
&nbsp;
<img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/gQY1aC1up-Q57HzoxtGGF8EptRrZDxzQxJUmujIHOFwoWA6JSZbDYnuDsS3mTfnKAUgah31SgvhGGyKaRsJrZBCcx2mSGA6nBQbtbdSH1_pqC3xkIOWEH96kvn3ZvRBZHcLF-KbXck7vPRUHSJRTK0JKp6439IVXlh5yUphLMcMpet5_U5_QoJE5Ag" width="624" height="416" loading="lazy">
(The inside of a Google data center. Photo via Google.)
<h2>Energy Efficiency</h2>
Alphabet allocated $1.02 billion from its sustainability bond to energy efficiency projects, but the report didn’t clarify what that money went toward. The company did say that four data centers in Chile, Taiwan, Belgium and Finland received funding to make them more energy efficient but not how exactly they achieved that.
A Google blog post from February 2020 sheds light on what the money from the bond might have gone toward. The post, authored by Urs Hölzle, Google’s senior vice president of technical infrastructure, notes that back in 2014, Google developed an artificial intelligence-powered recommendation system to cool its data centers. Hölzle also wrote that the company invested in smart temperature, lighting and cooling systems at the same time. Further, Google says it builds custom servers.
Operating data centers requires a massive capital investment on its own: These facilities consume electricity 24/7 and the servers within them need to be constantly monitored for any issues that might cause them and the services they power—from Google search to YouTube and Drive—to fail.&nbsp;
On top of that, data centers are cooled by purpose-built AI technology, store hundreds of custom servers and are equipped with smart energy equipment. All of this technology must be monitored, maintained and updated—part of that $1 billion might have gone toward that.
<h2> What It Means</h2>
Alphabet’s sustainability bond appears to be targeted at lowering Google’s Scope 2 emissions, those generated by the power a company purchases. In its 2022 environmental report, Google reported 6.5 million tons of Scope 2 emissions, an increase of 700,000 tons from the previous year.&nbsp;
Driving down Scope 2 emissions is difficult as companies often don’t have the capital to materially impact the sources that power their local grids. Alphabet does, though, as the PPAs it has negotiated show. It also has the money to construct more efficient buildings—and retrofit older ones with greener technology—and design and build custom software and hardware to make its data centers consume less power.&nbsp;&nbsp;
While Alphabet has the financial muscle to lower Google’s Scope 2 emissions, lowering the company’s Scope 3 emissions is a whole other challenge. Scope 3 emissions are indirect emissions that cannot be credited to the emissions a company creates firsthand or secondhand through the purchase of power: think employees commuting to and from work, emissions created by the use or disposal of a product and business travel.&nbsp;
In 2021, Google’s Scope 3 emissions measured 9.5 million tons. Alphabet appears to be targeting Scope 3 emissions with its sustainability bond, although just $22 million was directed toward clean transportation projects.

Alphabet, the parent company of Google, has spent more than $5 billion on green energy projects since 2020 according to its recently released “2022 Sustainability Bond Impact Report.

Google Spend More Than $5b on Green Energy Projects Since 2020

The biochar market is poised to grow by 13.4% annually between 2022 and 2028, a new report said. The “Global Biochar Market 2022-2028” report, published by Triton Market Research, was added to the world’s largest market research store, ResearchandMarkets.com, Yahoo Finance reported on August 23. It anticipates that the global market for biochar should grow at a compound annual growth rate of 13.4% in value and 10.34% per year in volume. Biochar is a kind of charcoal obtained from decomposing biomass, such as agricultural residue, forestry waste or animal manure. It’s made by heating these organic materials at very high temperatures in the absence of oxygen. The material has frequently been used in agriculture for its properties, which can improve soil health. For example, it can replenish soil nutrients, boost soil aeration and water-holding capacity, improving crop yields. It can also improve soil carbon sequestration and reduce emissions. But if biochar has become a bit of a buzzword recently, it’s because of the material’s capacity to store high quantities of carbon, generating carbon credits. That’s because the end product of the biomass-heating process is a solid, carbon-rich material, meaning that, with some simplification, biochar is a way to turn biomass into a carbon sink. Biochar tends to be very hard to break down, meaning that when it’s done correctly and incorporated into soils, it can be between 10 and 100 times more stable than the feedstock it’s made from. That means the CO2 it stores won’t degrade as quickly as other organic materials, and biochar can store it for decades or centuries. According to the report, several factors are driving the growth of biochar, including the availability of cheap feedstock and the emergence of favorable initiatives for the material. One of the main driving forces behind biochar, however, was the need to increase crop yields across developing countries to sustain population growth there and support local economies. For that reason, the Middle East and Africa were found likely to become the fastest-growing regions in the biochar market. The report also mentioned Turkey as a country where the material was gaining significant traction due to its widespread application. The report also says that biochar’s ability to store carbon is a key factor supporting its growth because it enables projects to attract critical financing. It said the biggest challenges for the sector were its relatively high costs, a lack of pilot projects, and the possible contamination of biochar. Biochar projects tend to be fairly small, but according to experts and industry insiders, the sector as a whole has lots of carbon-sequestration potential, in part because of biochar’s application across several industries, like agriculture, carbon storage, and even construction materials—biochar can also be embedded into cement and asphalt. On the downside, making biochar requires lots of energy—remember the biomass has to be heated at very high temperatures—meaning it could result in CO2 emissions if the process is carried out using fossil fuels or natural gas. The report adds to the recent enthusiasm some observers have expressed for biochar. On August 16, the world’s largest carbon registry, Verra, released a new methodology to allow biochar projects to quantify their climate benefits after it said it received significant pressure from biochar projects. "I get about two to three emails a day from potential project developers asking when the methodology will be prepared for use," Liz Guinessey, Verra’s manager of food and blue carbon innovations, told S&amp;P Global in June 2022. “We do expect to have a pretty robust pipeline of projects as soon as the methodology is approved.” Verra’s move essentially added a new type of carbon credit to the registry’s offer and allowed projects to generate and sell carbon credits. Microsoft, one of the world’s biggest corporate buyers of carbon removals, has also recently expressed interest in buying more biochar credits. “We’ve started to include more categories of carbon removal [in our portfolio],” Lucas Joppa, the company's chief environmental officer, told the Climeworks Direct Air Capture Summit 2022, held in Zurich, via video call on June 30. “Biochar is one we’ve got an interest in.” The full report is available for purchase starting from $2,750 for a single-user license from ResearchandMarkets.com. An enterprise license costs $4,000.

The biochar market is poised to grow by 13.4% annually between 2022 and 2028, a new report said.

Biochar Market Set to Grow by 13.4% per Year through 2028, Report Says

(Photo by Naveed Ahmed via Unsplash)
Lawmakers in India approved a bill to set up a domestic carbon market and ban the export of carbon credits, local media reported on August 8.
Members of the lower house of the Indian parliament, the Lok Sabha, approved the Energy Conservation Amendment Bill 2022, which enabled the government to regulate carbon trading in the country and oversee the country’s transition to clean sources of energy.
With the move, India joins a growing list of developing countries calling for a halt to the export of carbon credits from local projects.
Before India, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and Honduras had also announced or planned bans on carbon credit exports.
Countries hosting carbon credit projects, typically based in the global south, are becoming increasingly worried about the impact of the voluntary carbon market on their ability to meet their national emissions reduction goals.&nbsp;
In the voluntary carbon market, companies develop projects privately. After their climate benefits are certified by third-party standard-setting organizations, they sell credits to those looking to reduce their carbon footprint—often international companies based abroad.&nbsp;
But to avoid “double counting,” i.e. make sure that only one company or country claims the benefits of a carbon project, if the credit is sold to an international company, the country it was generated in can’t count the environmental benefit of the project for their accounts. And so the growth of the market has some countries concerned that the trade might leave them with insufficient resources to reach their greenhouse gas reduction goals.
“Carbon credits are not going to be exported. No question,” the country’s power and renewable energy minister, Raj Kumar Singh, told lawmakers debating the bill. “These credits will have to be generated by domestic companies, bought by domestic companies,” he said.
In other countries that recently announced credit export bans, such as Papua New Guinea and Indonesia, the governments suggested that the ban would be temporary until governments could “take stock” and issue new rules.
Singh did not provide details about when the ban would come into effect or when the country’s carbon market would kick in. But S&amp;P Global quoted an anonymous source with knowledge of the matter as saying that the ban is likely to remain in place until “climate goals are met.”&nbsp;
It’s not clear which climate goals the source referred to. India’s upcoming targets include increasing the share of clean energy in its electricity mix from around 42% currently to 50% by 2030, as well as reducing its emissions by 45% from 2005 levels.
ESG Today said that the bill laid the foundation for the country to launch a compliance carbon market, one where authorities allocate an allowance of carbon credits to corporations in polluting industries. If they exceed their allowance, businesses will have to buy additional credits to cover their excess pollution. If they remain below their allowance, they can sell any leftover credits for a profit.
The shares of the Indian company EKI Energy, one of the world’s largest carbon credit developers, fell sharply following the news. Between August 8 and 11, shares fell more than 20% before recovering slightly in the following days.
India is the world’s third-largest carbon emitter after China and the United States and accounts for some 8% of annual global emissions. However, on a per capita basis, India is well below the global average. India’s per capita emissions total 1.96 tons of CO2 per person, while the global average is 6.55 tons.
Earlier in 2022, India pledged to reach net zero emissions by 2070.

Lawmakers in India approved a bill to set up a domestic carbon market and ban the export of carbon credits, local media reported on August 8.

India Inches Closer to Banning Carbon Credit Exports

(Photo by Andrew Stickelman for Unsplash)
Amazon’s greenhouse gas emissions rose 18% in 2021, the company said in its latest sustainability report published in early August.
The company said it emitted 71.54 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) in 2021, up from 60.64 million tons in 2020 and 51.17 million tons in 2019. That’s more than the total carbon footprint of several countries, including Greece, Peru and Norway. It’s also nearly as much CO2e put into the atmosphere as the country of Bangladesh, home to about 165 million people.
The figure also represents a whopping 40% increase compared to 2019 when it emitted 51.17 million tons of CO2e.
“While we’ve had success cutting emissions from some operations, we are still early in the process of transforming others,” the company acknowledged in the report.
“Some actions and investments have immediate carbon savings, while others will take years to demonstrate results,” it said.
Amazon said it managed to decrease its carbon intensity by 1.9% compared to 2020, which means that it has lowered the proportion of CO2 emissions per dollar it earned, improving the carbon efficiency of its operations. It said it was the third year in a row it had managed to lower the figure—it had fallen 16% between 2019 and 2020.
But at the same time, Amazon experienced rapid growth, undercutting its modest carbon intensity gains. The company said it grew its business at “an unprecedented pace” to respond to increased demand for its services during the pandemic, allegedly creating some 750,000 full-time and part-time jobs worldwide between early 2020 and the end of 2021.
Amazon accounts for its carbon emissions by including Scope 1, Scope 2 as well as Scope 3 emissions. Scope 1 emissions are those generated by assets owned by an organization, like its warehouses. Scope 2 emissions are created indirectly, for example, by the power plant it purchases electricity from. Scope 3 emissions are those generated across a company’s value chain, by its suppliers, employees and customers using its products.
Because of the sectors it operates in—shipping, warehouses and manufacturing—Amazon’s carbon emissions are hard to abate. The company says it is taking steps to curb its carbon footprint. In its sustainability report, it said it had sourced 85% of its energy needs from renewable sources and that it aimed to reach 100% by 2025.
The company has committed to achieving net zero by 2040, 10 years before the deadline set by the Paris Agreement to keep global temperatures from rising more than 1.5C from pre-industrial levels.
In 2019, it also co-founded the Climate Pledge, a commitment by several large companies to report their carbon footprints and reach net zero across their operations by 2040. The pledge is not legally binding, nor does it carry any penalty for violating it. Some 300 other companies have joined, including Best Buy, IBM, Microsoft, PepsiCo, Siemens, Unilever, Verizon and Visa.
In July 2022, Amazon announced that it would purchase 100,000 electric vehicles from Rivian through 2030 to make deliveries.
The company offsets the emissions it can’t abate by purchasing carbon credits on the voluntary carbon market.
<h2>Amazon’s Emissions Could Be a Cause for Concern for the U.N.</h2>
But the new reported increase in carbon emissions will be a concern for scientists, experts and observers. The U.N. has recently launched “Race to Zero,” an initiative to encourage companies and governments to commit to reducing their emissions by 50% by 2030. A growing number of scientists argue that the target and other near-term emission reduction goals are necessary milestones if the world wants to have a chance to limit global warming to 1.5C by 2050. Amazon’s latest increase takes it farther away from reaching that goal.
“The challenges we collectively face on the path to net-zero carbon are considerable,” Amazon said in the report. “Many new technologies are showing promise in their ability to reduce carbon emissions but may still need significant development.”
Amazon’s green credentials faced fierce criticism recently. In February 2022, Amazon was accused of “drastically undercounting” its emissions by Reveal News. The outlet reported at the time that Amazon counts only the carbon emissions generated by Amazon products sold on its site as part of its carbon footprint—but not those sold by other companies.
The problem is that Amazon products make up just 1% of all products sold on the platform. Other brands’ products sold directly by Amazon account for 39 percent, while third-party sellers account for the remaining 60 percent. By not counting the latter two categories, Amazon appears to be declaring just the tip of the iceberg of its carbon emissions, Reveal News alleged.

Amazon’s greenhouse gas emissions rose 18% in 2021, the company said in its latest sustainability report published in early August.

Amazon's Carbon Emissions Rose 18% in 2021

Shell and German airline Lufthansa announced a memorandum of understanding for sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) supply, both companies said in press releases on August 1. The memorandum is the first step in establishing a fixed purchase agreement between both parties.&nbsp;
Shell has agreed to potentially supply up to 594 million gallons of SAF to Lufthansa between 2024 and 2030 at airports around the globe. Shell said this would be “one of the most significant commercial collaborations for SAF in the aviation sector and Shell’s largest SAF commitment to date.”&nbsp;
SAF, according to the International Civil Aviation Organization, “are renewable or waste-derived aviation fuels that meet sustainability criteria.” SAF can be made from used cooking oil, for example, and even from captured CO2 emissions.&nbsp;
Shell said it could use four different technological production modes for the SAF and base the production on a wide range of different sustainable products. The British oil and gas giant further stated that an airline’s tank can be filled with up to 50% SAF and that it can reduce lifecycle emissions for aviation fuel by 80% in comparison to traditional fuel.&nbsp;
For Shell, SAF will play a big role in its future. The company announced in September 2021 that it plans to produce about 2 million tons of SAF per year by 2025. By 2030 its goal is to have SAF make up 10% of its aviation fuel sales.
According to the airline, it is already the largest SAF customer in Europe and “one of the world’s leading airline groups in the use of sustainable kerosene.” Lufthansa said in the press release announcing the memorandum of understanding that it has a strategy to reach CO2 neutrality by 2050, according to which it plans to cut its emissions in half by 2030 in comparison to 2019 levels. The airline considers SAF an important component of making its flights CO2-neutral.&nbsp;
Another important way it will attempt to reach that goal is with its new “green fares,” announced in a press release on August 2. The green fares will include a compensation for CO2 emissions consisting of 80% “high-quality climate protection projects” and 20% usage of SAF. Lufthansa will offer its green fares for all passengers flying from Denmark, Sweden and Norway and will include additional benefits such as free rebooking, extra status and award miles. The fares will be offered on all Lufthansa Group airlines, which includes Swiss, Austrian Airlines and Brussels Airlines.&nbsp;
The carrier provided no further details on the exact pricing structure for its customers, but airline travel news and rewards site One Mile at a Time did a cursory search and found that “economy green” and “business green” fares on a one-way flight from Copenhagen to Frankfurt cost $162.51 and $224.30, respectively. The cheapest economy fare, economy light, came in at $87.93 and the cheapest business class fare, business saver, was $167.48. Notably, both green fares were the exact same price as the highest-cost non-green options in each class. No details on the date of the flight were given.
Because SAF is much more costly than conventional jet fuel and the supply is still scarce, it is not yet extensively utilized. According to the International Air Transport Association, SAF accounted for less than 1% of the world's demand for jet fuel in 2019. In 2020, 3.4 million metric tons of SAF were produced worldwide according to a study conducted in April 2022 by the statistics website Statista. In 2022, 4.9 million metric tons are anticipated and for 2025 that figure is estimated to jump to 8.2 million metric tons.&nbsp;
The aviation industry’s path to zero emissions continues to be questioned by some. The European Federation for Transport &amp; Environment said in a blog post in October 2021 that the sector’s goals are too dependent on subsidies for fossil fuels and cheap carbon offsets.
According to a report from KMPG, which modelled the demand for SAF, demand will continue to rise reliably over the next 15 years. However, a number of factors, notably the challenge of making SAF manufacturing economical, may restrict its market penetration beyond then.

Shell and Lufthansa announced a memorandum of understanding for sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) supply, both companies said in press releases on August 1.

Shell and Lufthansa Agree on Potential Deal for 594 Million Gallons of Sustainable Aviation Fuel

The city of Dallas is considering selling carbon credits, according to a story from The Dallas Morning News published on August 1.
The proposed credits would be generated through both planting and preserving trees in the Great Trinity Forest, a 6,000-acre forest located southeast of the city’s downtown core. Both citizens and businesses would be able to purchase the carbon credits. Arun Agarwal, president of the Dallas’ Park and Recreation board told the paper that credit sales could generate between $20-$25 million over 40 years.
There was no information given on how many trees would be planted or how many acres of forest would be preserved under the proposed plan.&nbsp;
John Jenkins, the director of the city’s Park and Recreation department, said the idea is still in its early stages and that the department’s board members will receive a briefing of its pros and cons by October.
Tony Shidid, chairman of the city’s planning commission, presented the idea as a win-win to The Dallas Morning News.
“It’s a scenario where nobody loses,” Shidid said. “The Great Trinity Forest gets protected and the city of Dallas monetizes it in a way that it can finance other projects in the parks department.”
<h2>The Rise of Urban Carbon Credits</h2>
Typically, nature-based carbon credits are generated through large-scale tree-planting or preservation projects in massive forests, like the Amazon rainforest. However, in the United States, there is a movement to generate nature-based carbon credits in cities and densely populated urban areas.
The first sale of such credits in the U.S. occurred this year and generated $1 million, per an Axios story from April 4. The credits were sold as a bundle, with 31,533 in total changing hands for an average value of $31.71 per credit.&nbsp;
For reference, the average price for a nature-based carbon credit on the Verra registry—the premier standard-setter and registry—was $7.34 on August 2 according to CarbonCredits.com, a carbon credit news and pricing site. Doug McPherson of Otium Business Consulting, which represented the cities in the sale, said in a press release announcing the sale that the high cost per credit came down to the “immense value of our city forests.”
The credits came from 13 different projects located in Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Washington. Boise, Chattanooga, Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Richmond were a few of the cities where projects took place.&nbsp;
The credits were certified by City Forest Credits (CFC), a nonprofit headquartered in Seattle that also operates an urban nature-based carbon credit registry. The credits themselves were sold to Regen Network, a blockchain company that tokenizes carbon credits.
Rather than focusing solely on sucking CO2 out of the air, CFC also makes it a point to emphasize and quantify the benefits that planting trees in urban areas creates. Bloomberg covered the nonprofit in 2018 and detailed a few of its pilot projects from that time.&nbsp;
This included working with the city of Austin, Texas, to reforest land along a local creek and plant trees at a local park to provide shade to citizens. Planting trees near running water sources helps keep pollutants out of them during heavy rains, with the trees also serving as a buffer against erosion. According to CFC, the yearly value of the city of Austin’s tree-planting project is $4,900, a figure that includes savings from reduced electricity and natural gas consumption and the associated CO2 emissions avoided by the reduced energy use.
CFC also worked with officials in King County, Washington, to preserve 1,500 acres of unprotected tree canopies in and adjacent to urban communities. While the city of Austin purchased the credits its pilot project generated to offset its emissions, King County’s credits were part of the recently completed deal with the Regen Network according to a June 3 story in the Seattle Times. The outlet noted that the credits were generated by a 46-acre forest parcel in Issaquah, a city of 40,000 people that’s around a 20-minute drive from Seattle.

The city of Dallas is considering selling carbon credits, according to a story from The Dallas Morning News published on August 1.

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