An operation like online retail giant Amazon (AMZN) is energy-intensive. There is simply no other way to put it. Between the legions of delivery vehicles bringing our ordered products to our doorsteps and the massive energy expenditures of data centers and the like, Amazon burns a lot of power. But Amazon is also working to reduce its power needs, and focus on sustainability, a process that is garnering it some respect. Sufficient respect, in fact, to push up Amazon stock fractionally in Friday afternoon’s trading.
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Amazon ships somewhere around a thousand packages a minute worldwide, reports note. And while there have been significant gains in its emissions patterns, Amazon has also been making headway with its Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) scales. Word from Amazon’s Chief Sustainability Officer Kara Hurst notes that Amazon’s pathway to being more sustainable will “never be linear,” but progress is being made regardless.
Amazon still has a goal to reach net-zero status by 2040, even as its total numbers are on the rise, up from 64.38 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent (MTCO2e) in 2023 to 68.25 million in 2024. But it did meet its goal of matching 100% of the electricity used with renewable energy, and has done so for the last two years. Amazon will never stop pulling power, but it can at least improve how much of that power comes from certain sources.
New Leader for the Earth Fund
In a bid to further improve things, Jeff Bezos recently tapped a new leader for the Bezos Earth Fund. A “climate and biodiversity fund” valued at $10 billion, the fund will be run by the former head of the Alexa voice division, Tom Taylor.
Taylor retired from Amazon after 23 years, back in 2022, and will now be president and CEO of the Bezos Earth Fund. Taylor noted that he was “thrilled” to join the fund, planning to “…lead with the bold mandate to invent our way out of Earth’s environmental challenges with a combination of long-term thinking, technical curiosity, and excellent execution.”
Is Amazon a Good Long-Term Investment?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Strong Buy consensus rating on AMZN stock based on 44 Buys and one Hold assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 22.25% rally in its share price over the past year, the average AMZN price target of $251.44 per share implies 11.28% upside potential.
