Big tech companies are quick to make lofty goals about their carbon footprint reduction, however they need to be held accountable in their subsequent actions by consumers. Pledges to fight climate change are only as significant as the actions that follow them. On top of having a misleading pledge to begin with, NGOs like Greenpeace have looked more into Amazon’s pledge and found that there is no concrete plan that Amazon has put forward to how they will reach these goals. If this supply chain is not accounted for, these Amazon actors could continue to emit as much carbon as they desire, while Amazon is advertising their “climate pledge”. Additionally, consumers should be asking how Amazon plans to reduce the environmental impact of their supply chain. While a pledge to reduce these emissions in the future is a great step, consumers should not forget the large role that Amazon has already played in contributing to climate change.
Furthermore, this astronomical carbon footprint doesn’t even take into account the carbon footprint of Amazon’s vastly reaching supply chain. While these big promises from Amazon are exciting and clearly better than a company having no climate change stance, it is important for consumers to understand the context and future steps of these plans.Īmazon emitted 44.4 million tons of carbon dioxide from their direct operations in 2018. For example, in 2019 Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos made a pledge to source 100% of Amazon’s energy from renewable sources by 2030 and to become a net zero carbon emitter by 2040. New Constructionīig Tech companies are making even bigger promises about their commitments to reduce their environmental impact. Common areas of improvement for operational efficiency are in energy use and sourcing, waste diversion, and water usage. Once enough data from a building emissions is collected and analyzed, building stakeholders can target areas for improvement to reduce emissions and increase efficiency. Some of real estate’s key disclosures include energy management, water management, management of tenant sustainability impacts and climate change adaptation. Many data collection and analysis solutions have emerged with the goal of becoming the standardized greenhouse gas emissions database.
A large portion of real estate emissions are from indirect sources of building use and operations that are not easily tracked. One of the challenges to real estate emissions reduction is gathering enough data to have a baseline emissions starting point. These improvements in technology and structural design can be applied to new and existing structures and aim to provide the most emissions reductions for the lowest possible cost. Due to its large contribution to emissions, real estate has become the focal point of many sustainable innovations. A significant component of these reduction goals is the real estate sector, which accounts for almost 40% of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions. Driven by recent global sustainability commitments like the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN-SDP), many countries have set aggressive carbon emissions reduction goals and laid out plans to enforce sustainability standards in all sectors.
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