Tuesday 2 August 2022 09:57 AM Amazon's CO2 emissions are INCREASING: Retail giant's carbon footprint has ... trends now

Amazon's carbon emissions grew 18 per cent in 2021, largely due to demand for its services during the Covid pandemic.

In a new report, the Seattle tech giant has revealed it emitted 71.54 million metric tons of carbon-dioxide equivalent last year. 

This marks a 40 per cent rise, and the third straight year of increased emissions, since the company started sharing the figures back in 2019. 

It follows Amazon posting a $2 billion loss last week for the second straight quarter, as shoppers return to stores following the pandemic. 

Amazon aims to become carbon neutral by 2040, and power 100 per cent of its operations with renewable energy by 2025. 

But in a blog post, Amazon said its 'carbon-intensive endeavours' mean the path to decarbonisation 'remains challenging'. 

'We operate businesses – delivery and transportation logistics, physical stores, grocery, manufacturing, and cloud computing services – that involve moving products, manufacturing goods, and creating computing capacity, all at scale,' the firm said. 

'While some of these businesses – including cloud computing and e-commerce – offer greater efficiencies, some are more carbon-intensive endeavours.' 

Amazon said it had to scale its business 'at an unprecedented pace' to help meet the needs of customers through the pandemic. 

Amazon's sprawling business covers fulfillment centres, delivery vehicles, technology devices, grocery stores, cloud services, data centres and more. 

The largest emissions growth by percentage was in a category Amazon calls capital goods – including building construction, servers and other hardware, equipment and vehicles.