Thunberg, Amazon, Rivian
Here’s a bright spot in today’s otherwise gray newsfeed.
One week before Greta Thunberg’s impassioned speech to the UN general assembly to act on climate change, Amazon announced plans to buy 100k electric delivery vans to reduce carbon emissions.
The statement was part of a broader pledge made by chief executive Jeff Bezos to make Amazon carbon neutral by 2040, 10 years ahead of the target set in the Paris climate agreement.
In Bezos’s announcement he said it is his intention to send a gigantic signal to the marketplace to start developing these technologies because there is demand for them.
The electric vehicles were ordered from Detroit-based startup Rivian, for whom Amazon led a $700M financing round earlier this year.
Jointly Rivian and Amazon’s plan is to have the first 10k vans on the road by 2022 and the remaining coming online by 2030.
Amazon’s delivery network has become a force in the shipping industry, although it still relies heavily on partners like UPS and USPS. It is the part of Amazon’s business that attracts attention for being climate un-friendly.
Carbon neutrality means no net release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, either by offsetting through planting trees or eliminating emissions altogether.
This is a smart business move and not strictly climate-altruistic.
In addition to improving odds of a positive return from its investment in Rivian, it is a response to Amazon employee activism.
A group representing more than a thousand Amazon employees threatened to walk out if the company did not change course on climate. Employee demands include cutting emissions to zero by 2030, stopping providing cloud-computing to fossil fuel companies, and ending donations to lobbyists and politicians who deny climate change. These last two won’t be any easier than the first one.
Outside the company, AMZN shareholders have also been pushing for disclosures on how climate change could disrupt Amazon’s business. Thus far, those calls have gone unanswered.
To me it is an extraordinary (and rare) example of a company, employees, shareholders moving in the right direction, together.
More about the shiny new electro-vans, here:
https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-puts-charge-startup-automaker-rivian/
