Amazon sustainability report 2025: why absolute emissions rose 16%

Amazon's greenhouse gas emissions rose 16% in 2025 to 80.85 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. Its emissions per shipped unit fell, but growth in the supply chain, data centres and electricity demand outweighed those gains.

Amazon published its 2025 Sustainability Report in July 2026. The report covers a business that now spans retail, logistics, devices, entertainment and Amazon Web Services (AWS), so no single operating metric captures its environmental impact.

The most important distinction is between efficiency and scale. Amazon delivered each package with fewer emissions than a year earlier and expanded its electric delivery fleet. At the same time, its absolute emissions increased by 11.3 million tonnes. The supply chain accounted for 76% of the total footprint.

Amazon's 2025 footprint in seven figures

Efficiency improved, but growth moved faster

Amazon's carbon intensity has fallen substantially over the longer term. The company reports a 38% reduction since 2019 while revenue increased by 156%. Emissions per shipped unit also fell by 39% over the same period.

Those measures show that Amazon can generate more revenue and move more packages for each tonne emitted. They do not show that its total climate impact is shrinking. Absolute emissions rose from 65.28 million tonnes in 2023 to 69.55 million in 2024 and 80.85 million in 2025.

The 2025 increase was large enough to reverse the more favourable direction suggested by the efficiency measures. Carbon intensity itself rose by 3% during the year, even though it remains well below the 2019 level.

For a company with a 2040 net-zero target, absolute emissions ultimately have to fall. Better ratios can make expansion less carbon-intensive, but they cannot substitute for a declining total footprint.

The supply chain is three quarters of the footprint

Amazon attributes 76% of its 2025 emissions to its supply chain. These emissions rose 20% from the previous year and include purchased goods, construction, transport, equipment and other activities outside Amazon's direct operational control.

This is where the company's size becomes most visible. Warehouses, data centres, vehicles and consumer products require steel, concrete, chips, batteries, packaging and freight. Improvements inside Amazon's own buildings do not automatically reduce the emissions created while that infrastructure is made.

Amazon says it engaged suppliers representing 70% of supply-chain emissions. Of those suppliers, 62% had credible decarbonisation plans, up 23 percentage points from the previous year. That is evidence of wider supplier coverage, although a plan is not the same as an emissions reduction. Future reports will need to show whether the plans change purchasing decisions and the absolute supply-chain total.

The boundary follows the familiar Scope 1, 2 and 3 structure. Amazon's direct operations accounted for 19% of the footprint and purchased electricity for 5%. The value chain is therefore the decisive part of the result.

AWS is now an electricity and water test

Amazon added more than 1.2 gigawatts of data-centre capacity in the final quarter of 2025 alone. That expansion helps explain why purchased-electricity emissions rose by 34%, despite Amazon matching 100% of its annual electricity consumption with renewable energy for the third consecutive year.

The annual match means Amazon procured enough renewable electricity to equal its consumption over the year. It does not mean every data centre used carbon-free electricity in every location and hour. New capacity can still increase demand on grids that are not yet able to supply clean power continuously.

Amazon reports a 2025 power usage effectiveness (PUE) of 1.14. PUE compares total data-centre energy with the electricity used by computing equipment, so a result closer to 1 indicates less overhead from cooling and other infrastructure. Amazon compares its result with a public-cloud average of 1.25 and an on-premises average of 1.63.

The figure shows efficient data-centre operation, but it is not a measure of total electricity demand. A highly efficient facility can still add a large load if computing capacity grows quickly enough. The wider pressure is covered in our guide to global electricity demand in 2026.

Amazon data centres withdrew 9.4 billion litres of water during 2025. The company says its water use efficiency (WUE) improved to 0.12 litres per kilowatt hour, down 20% in one year and 52% since 2021. It also reports that 26 data centres used reclaimed water, preserving 849 million litres of potable water, and that 130 facilities are contracted to use reclaimed water.

Location changes the meaning of those totals. Amazon says 48% of water withdrawals occurred in areas of low water stress, while 22% occurred in areas of high or extremely high stress. The same litre has a different local consequence depending on the catchment, season and competing demand.

Renewable matching does not erase local grid demand

Amazon's renewable-energy procurement is material. Matching annual consumption for three consecutive years requires a large portfolio of power purchase agreements and renewable projects.

But the 34% rise in purchased-electricity emissions shows why the accounting method needs context. Annual matching, local grid emissions and the physical increase in power use answer different questions. A reader needs all three before treating "100% renewable" as a complete description of the electricity footprint.

The same issue appears across large technology companies. Google's latest report also separates annual renewable matching from location-based grid emissions and its wider footprint. The dedicated analysis of Google's 2025 environmental report provides a direct comparison.

Electric vans are growing faster than the footprint is falling

Amazon operated more than 52,700 electric delivery vans in 2025, 68% more than a year earlier. They delivered 2.4 billion packages. The company is working towards 100,000 electric vans by 2030.

The fleet is now large enough to reduce fuel use and roadside emissions across a significant part of Amazon's delivery network. It also helps explain the 7% improvement in emissions per shipped unit.

Transport electrification does not remove the manufacturing footprint of vehicles, the electricity used to charge them or emissions from contracted carriers. The relevant test is whether a larger electric fleet helps reduce absolute logistics emissions as package volumes continue to rise. For the wider market context, see the UK electric van progress check.

Packaging improved unevenly

Amazon says 11% of shipments left its facilities without additional Amazon packaging in 2025. Since 2020, 7.9 billion packages have been shipped without added packaging, and the company says it has avoided 5.4 million tonnes of packaging since 2015.

The plastic total was less conclusive. Amazon used 74,073 tonnes of plastic packaging in 2025, compared with 74,137 tonnes in 2024. North American plastic use fell by 1%, while European use rose by 34% and the rest of the world rose by 2%.

Amazon also reports that 73% of North American shipments could be recycled through household waste streams, up from 63%. Recyclability is useful, but it does not show how much material was collected and recycled after delivery. The strongest evidence remains the amount of packaging avoided, the material used and the end-of-life route available to customers.

The 2040 pledge now depends on absolute reductions

Amazon has made measurable progress in delivery electrification, data-centre water efficiency, renewable-energy procurement and packaging avoidance. These changes reduce part of the impact created by each unit of activity.

The company-wide result moved in the opposite direction. Absolute emissions increased by 16%, supply-chain emissions rose by 20% and purchased-electricity emissions rose by 34%. The next report will need to show whether supplier action and cleaner infrastructure can begin to outweigh the growth that drove those increases.

Amazon's 2040 target is still fourteen years away, but the arithmetic is already clear. The footprint cannot reach net zero through intensity improvements alone. The decisive change will be a sustained fall in absolute emissions, especially across the supply chain.

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Official sources

• Amazon Sustainability: 2025 Sustainability Report landing page
• Amazon Sustainability: 2025 Sustainability Report PDF
• Amazon Sustainability: summary of the 2025 report
• Feature image: Amazon electric delivery vehicle by NotTheDefault, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0