Sustainability : The Climate Pledge announces nearly 100 new signatories

Amazon and Global Optimism announced that more than 300 companies have now signed The Climate Pledge, a nearly 600% growth in signatories over the past year. Among the nearly 100 new signatories joining today are the world’s largest container shipping company, Maersk; the leading enterprise software developer SAP; the North American timberland company Weyerhaeuser; the largest residential solar company in the U.S., Sunrun; and the leading brand in connected car and audio services, HARMAN. Pledge signatories in total generate over $3.5 trillion in global annual revenues and have more than 8 million employees across 51 industries in 29 countries.

Signatories to The Climate Pledge must agree to:

• Measure and report greenhouse gas emissions on a regular basis.
• Implement decarbonization strategies in line with the Paris Agreement through real business changes and innovations, including efficiency improvements, renewable energy, materials reductions, and other carbon emission elimination strategies.
• Neutralize any remaining emissions with additional, quantifiable, real, permanent, and socially beneficial offsets to achieve net-zero annual carbon emissions by 2040.

“The effects of climate change are becoming more and more apparent in our surroundings and daily lives, and we firmly believe that the private sector must continue to innovate and collaborate across regions and industries in order to decarbonize the global economy at scale,” said Andy Jassy, Amazon CEO. “It’s an encouraging sign that more than 300 businesses have now signed The Climate Pledge, which commits them to confronting climate change head-on by incorporating real business changes that will make a lasting impact on our planet. We can only do it together.”

Many of the new Pledge signatories are already making great strides toward reducing their carbon emissions:

• Maersk is providing industry-leading green customer offerings across the supply chain, including Maersk ECO Delivery, which targets emission reductions in ocean shipping. Amazon began participating in this service in 2020 and continues today. Amazon’s participation reduced emissions by approximately 20 KTonnes of CO2e (the equivalent of 50 million average passenger vehicle miles) in 2021.
• SAP recently accelerated its target for achieving net-zero carbon emissions to 2030—20 years earlier than originally targeted.
• Weyerhaeuser is sustainably managing forests and manufacturing wood products across North America to provide a sustainable supply of wood for homes and countless other products, while protecting wildlife habitat and serving as a natural climate solution through carbon sequestration and storage. Weyerhaeuser reforests 100 percent of its timberlands after harvesting—planting between 130 and 150 million trees each year.
• Sunrun’s systems have prevented 8.1 million metric tons of carbon emissions, which is equivalent to negating 20 billion miles driven by an average passenger vehicle.
• With a long-standing focus on purpose, sustainability is one of HARMAN’s key strategic business pillars. As part of HARMAN’s commitment to achieving net-zero carbon across Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions by 2040, it’s working toward ambitious, measurable shorter-term targets that aim to reduce emissions, energy usage, and waste across its value chain. HARMAN has introduced new product lines made from responsibly sourced and recycled materials and has committed to 100 percent renewable energy in all HARMAN factories by 2025.

The Climate Pledge also welcomes several companies that have previously received investments through the $2 billion Climate Pledge Fund, Amazon’s corporate venture capital fund that invests in companies that can help accelerate a path to meeting The Climate Pledge. These companies include BETA Technologies, an electric aerospace company, and Infinium, a renewable fuels technology company, which both aim to support decarbonization efforts in the global transportation sector. The sector was responsible for approximately 7.3 billion metric tons of carbon emissions in 2020. In fact, nearly 13% of signatories represent transportation, aviation, and logistics sectors, sending an important signal that there will be rapid growth in demand for products and services that help reduce carbon emissions in this key sector. Additionally, Climate Pledge Fund investee and new signatory Pachama is bringing quality, transparency, and scale to nature-based carbon markets. Pachama uses remote sensing and machine learning to measure carbon stored in forests and monitor them over time, allowing organizations and individuals to compensate for their emissions with confidence by supporting reforestation and forest conservation projects.

The announcement underscores the findings of the latest report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which emphasizes the need for immediate action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, to invest in natural climate solutions to limit warming to close to 1.5 degrees Celsius, and to mitigate damages.

"In the face of great peril, which is what the latest science depicts, the business community must have a clear path forward: Step up and accelerate emissions reductions so that we might avoid the worst of the damages yet to come,” said Christiana Figueres, founding partner of Global Optimism and the United Nations' former climate chief. “It’s encouraging, therefore, that 300 companies are committed to working together to achieve net-zero by 2040 or sooner through The Climate Pledge. But 300 companies are not enough to deliver the transformations we need. I encourage all business leaders to get to grips with the science, translate it for their businesses, and enable the changes we need without delay.”