Amazon to Invest $2 Billion, Focus on Carbon Neutrality
Amazon AMZN is leaving no stone unturned to achieve carbon neutrality goals. This is evident from its continuous investments in renewable energy projects.
The company’s latest announcement to invest $2 billion fund to help in the development of environment-friendly technologies and services is a testament to the same.
The latest investment is in line with Amazon and other companies’ aim of meeting The Climate Pledge, co-founded by Amazon and Global Optimism in 2019.
Amazon has been shifting focus from fossil fuels to clean energy for quite some time now. The shift to clean energy sources is anticipated to reduce costs in the near term, which is a major positive. Additionally, the company can generate healthy returns from strengthening solar and wind investments as there are several associated tax incentives.
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The latest move is in sync with the company’s aim of reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2040.
The fund will be used to help industries namely transportation and logistics, energy generation, storage and utilization, manufacturing, circular economy, food, agriculture, among others, to develop technologies focused on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Amazon revealed that it could reach 100% renewable energy by 2025, five years ahead of schedule.
Notably, the latest investment reflects Amazon’s Climate Pledge commitment.
Carbon Neutrality Gaining Steam
In addition to Amazon, tech giants like Alphabet GOOGL, Microsoft MSFT and Apple AAPL are also taking initiatives to adopt alternative energy sources to lower overall carbon emissions and cut energy bills substantially.
Google’s aggressive three-fold strategy — which includes energy efficiency, renewable energy procurement and carbon offsets — is a testament to the commitment of carbon neutrality.
Microsoft is also making every effort to become carbon negative by 2030. It inked two power purchase agreements with EDP Renewables North America LLC to work on a wind energy project based out of Paulding County, OH.
Meanwhile, Apple is looking for ways to develop a carbon-free project soon.
Amazon’s strengthening carbon neutrality initiatives remain noteworthy. Apart from the latest move, the e-commerce giant recently announced four new renewable projects in Australia, Spain, Sweden, and the United States, which are expected to generate 300 megawatts and 840k megawatt hour of extra clean energy and renewable capacity, respectively.
Moreover, the company’s purchase order for 100,000 electric delivery trucks from Rivian remains a major positive. These emission-free vehicles will reduce carbon footprint further.
The total number of launched utility-scale wind and solar renewable energy projects of Amazon stands at 31 to date. Moreover, the total number of installed solar rooftops on fulfillment centers and sort centers stands at 60.
Since 2015, the company has reduced the weight of outbound packaging by 33% and eliminated more than 880,000 tons of packaging material.
Further, it has 91 renewable energy projects globally.
All these strong endeavors are expected to keep its renewable energy game a step ahead of peers.
Zacks Rank
Currently, Amazon carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
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