Amazon announced this week it is expanding its Sustainability Exchange resource hub, by offering its value chain partners in the US access to invest in nature-based projects and carbon removal technologies through ‘high-integrity science-based” carbon credits.
Basing many of its actions on research from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which highlights the scale of the global carbon problem, Amazon said it is focused on reducing deforestation, restoring forest systems, and helping remove the estimated one trillion tonnes of existing carbon emissions from the atmosphere. Amazon noted carbon credits “are an important tool to help achieve this”.
The e-commerce and technology business said carbon credits “finance actions that avoid or reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, support social and economic development in communities, and provide a mechanism to measure and verify the climate impact of projects that are critical to our planet”. It acknowledged the process of securing high-quality credits is complex because organisations often lack access to them and seek assurance the underlying projects will deliver meaningful environmental benefits.
Amazon launched its Sustainability Exchange in 2024 in an effort to drive collaboration and amplify the best decarbonisation solutions for companies of all sizes. Within it are educational materials for companies to engage on best practices with their respective environmental strategies.
According to Amazon, the addition of carbon credits to the platform means qualified companies can scale their sustainability action in new ways, and complement their existing and ongoing decarbonisation efforts.
Carbon credits offered will only be available to organisations with a net-zero carbon emissions target covering Scope 1, Scope 2, and Scope 3, and those which measure and publicly report GHG emissions on a regular basis and conduct their work in line with the latest climate science.
Kara Hurst, chief sustainability officer at Amazon, commented: “The voluntary carbon market has been challenged with issues of transparency, credibility, and the availability of high-quality carbon credits, which has led to scepticism about nature and technological carbon removal as an effective tool to combat climate change.
“However, the science is clear: We must halt and reverse deforestation and restore millions of miles of forests to slow the worst effects of climate change. We’re using our size and high vetting standards to help promote additional investments in nature, and we are excited to share this new opportunity with companies who are also committed to the difficult work of decarbonising their operations.”
As Hurst alluded to, there has been controversy around carbon credits in the past, particularly relating to their usage leading organisations to claim ‘carbon neutrality’. They can be viewed as simply moving the responsibility for the existence of emissions elsewhere, and a distraction in actually finding solutions that are going to reducing GHG emissions altogether.
Watchdog Carbon Market Watch has a plethora of guidance on carbon credits, including telling organisations to refrain from using this tool to claim carbon neutrality, “without having achieved deep decarbonisation”.
[image credit: Amazon]
