Why does Amazon, which has pledged to be carbon neutral, operate 164 flights a day?

Author | Liang Chengmin

Editor | Li Shuaifei

In April 2021, Zhang Wenyi, Amazon's global vice president and executive director of Amazon Web Services Greater China, published a signed article entitled "Leading the Green Cloud Journey for Corporate Sustainable Development."

The article mentioned that Amazon and Global Optimism jointly released the Climate Declaration in 2019, aiming to achieve zero carbon emissions in all business lines by 2040. Amazon achieved the goals of the Paris Agreement 10 years ahead of schedule, which is consistent with the general direction of sustainable development in China and the world.

She revealed that Amazon has also set a goal to use renewable energy, achieving 100% renewable energy for its global infrastructure by 2025, five years ahead of the original 2030 goal.

In order to achieve the above "carbon neutrality" goal, Amazon first focused on green energy transformation.

Amazon is one of the world's largest corporate purchasers of renewable energy, with 206 renewable energy projects around the world, including 71 utility-scale wind and solar projects and 135 solar rooftops at its facilities and stores, with a total generating capacity of more than 8,500 megawatts (MW).

The first renewable energy project supported by Amazon in China is a 100 MW solar project in Shandong, which is expected to generate 128,000 megawatt hours (MWh) of clean energy per year upon completion.

At the same time, Amazon uses the energy efficiency advantages of cloud computing to help companies achieve their sustainable development goals.

Cloud computing has more advantages than traditional local data centers in terms of data center energy consumption management, cooling optimization, high-efficiency server use, and improved server utilization due to its scale effect. It can also more effectively reduce carbon dioxide emissions and negative impacts on the environment. IDC predicts that from 2021 to 2024, further application of cloud computing technology can prevent the emission of more than 1 billion tons of carbon dioxide. Therefore, cloud computing will inject strong momentum into the sustainable development of enterprises.

Amazon Web Services relies on the scale of its data centers to improve agility, elasticity, accelerate innovation, and save costs for enterprises, while also providing better resource utilization and energy efficiency than traditional local infrastructure.

The results of relevant surveys and studies show that the energy efficiency of Amazon Cloud Technology infrastructure is 3.6 times that of general US corporate data centers, mainly due to Amazon's more energy-efficient servers and higher server utilization. At the same time, when performing the same tasks, Amazon Cloud Technology's carbon footprint is 88% lower than that of traditional local data centers.

In addition, in addition to achieving higher infrastructure energy efficiency by migrating to the cloud, Amazon also provides enterprises with cloud computing technology and more than 200 categories of full-featured services to build efficient IT architectures, thereby enabling sustainable development of enterprises.

Whether it is collecting data from terminal devices through technologies such as the Internet of Things for better control and real-time decision-making to improve efficiency, storing, managing and analyzing data and gaining insights through technologies such as data lakes and data analytics, building a variety of visual data control panels, or using machine learning technology to improve the level of artificial intelligence to implement accurate predictions and business innovation, all of these are helping companies build solutions that support sustainable development and apply data intelligence to agricultural production, urban management, industrial manufacturing, logistics and transportation, and other aspects.

In addition, Amazon Web Services uses its global experience in cloud computing for the complete end-to-end industrial chain in the automotive industry to help China's automotive industry transform and innovate. Whether it is helping Toyota Connect release data lake solutions to accelerate the implementation of the Internet of Vehicles business, or enabling the business development of autonomous driving companies such as WeRide and Momenta, this series of efforts are helping the automotive industry move towards the goal of sustainable development.

From the above practices, it can be seen that Amazon is fulfilling its commitment to "carbon neutrality".

However, a new report from the Financial Times shows that Amazon's presence in the skies has continued to grow rapidly since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Recently, Amazon was operating 164 flights per day in the United States. This is an increase of 17% over the previous year.

The reason: As Amazon works to bring the entire delivery process from warehouse to doorstep under its control, allowing it to take business from FedEx, UPS and USPS as it prepares to launch its own delivery service, the e-commerce giant has increasingly relied on its fleet of private cargo planes to shuffle cargo planes across the country at a rapid clip.

70% of Americans now live within 100 miles of an airport served by Amazon Air, up from 54% a little over a year ago. Amazon Air now has a fully operational fleet of more than 70 aircraft, with an increased emphasis on air transportation in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ultimately, Amazon could fill a niche as a third competitor in package delivery — with itself as the largest customer.

“There is no sign that Amazon will slow down their preparations to expand next-day delivery,” said Joseph Schwieterman, a professor at DePaul University’s Chaddick Institute and lead author of the FT report.

Amazon Air has added service to seven airports since February, bringing the total number of airports that Amazon flies to 42. It has an 800,000-square-foot main hub in Cincinnati and a 700,000-square-foot facility at San Bernardino Airport near Los Angeles, which has become Amazon Air's hub on the West Coast.

Undoubtedly, the increase in flight frequency will produce more "carbon emissions".

While Amazon has pledged to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2040, the task is complicated by its fleet of delivery trucks and roster of airplanes, most of which are older.

In July 2020, Amazon announced that it had purchased 6 million gallons of biofuel, which it said would reduce emissions from its older fleet by 20%.

Amazon is currently advancing its international expansion with Amazon Air, which is centered around its European hub in Leipzig.

Beyond that, there are more than a dozen active international locations, the researchers said, though air traffic at the proposed European hub in Leipzig has been quieter than expected. In Europe, Amazon is “growing quietly without revealing their long-term intentions,” Schwieterman said. “It may only be a matter of time before Leipzig becomes an Amazon hotspot.”

The first big test for Amazon Air will be the upcoming holiday season as the company seeks to reliably offer two-day, next-day and same-day delivery, and Amazon Air is forming the backbone of that strategy.

It can be seen that with strategic adjustments and business development, Amazon has to continue to produce a large amount of "carbon emissions" in order to compete for more market share, but in order to fulfill its "carbon neutrality" commitment, it has to work hard to reduce energy consumption.

This dilemma is quite difficult to resolve.

The road ahead is long and arduous. How will Amazon “break through”? We will have to wait and see.

This article is originally written by Leifeng.com , and the author is Liang Chengmin. Please reply "reprint" to apply for authorization. Reprinting without authorization is prohibited.