Amazon employee survey reveals concerns about company’s climate leadership and enviro impacts
Amazon Employees for Climate Justice surveyed 800 of the tech giant’s workers to get feedback on Amazon’s climate impacts and the role of leadership in portraying and addressing these issues.
The employee advocacy group found that only 14% of those surveyed believe that climate impacts are a key consideration when Amazon leaders make business decisions. Fewer than 15% of employees responded that the company accurately portrays its greenhouse gas emissions.
The survey also queried employees about artificial intelligence developments, finding that 27% of Amazon workers trusted corporate leadership to make ethics a priority in AI product development.
Amazon annually releases a corporate sustainability report that discloses its carbon emissions, which have declined slightly over the last two years. The company tallied 68.8 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2023 — which is on par with the emissions generated by the nation of Hungary.
As AI use is ramping up, Amazon Web Services and fellow hyperscale data center companies such as Microsoft and Google are making big investments in their computing capacity and expanding their electricity demands.
“Every team I know is being told to use AI in our work, and many are working on developing AI tools, platforms, and models,” an AWS software engineer in Seattle said in response to the survey.
“But I’ve never heard a single conversation about the environmental impact of AI — it’s scary to know that we’re using unfathomable amounts of energy to power these AI tools, and no one is talking about how much energy the company is burning through,” the employee added.
The survey was conducted virtually and in-person in Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood where the company is headquartered.
Amazon Employees for Climate Justice have organized multiple protests over the years. In May 2023, it teamed up with Amazon Remote Advocacy to hold walkouts at multiple sites in a call for bolder climate action and a reconsidering of return-to-office policies. In 2020 it organized a “virtual walkout” over firings and warehouse conditions, among other actions.
Amazon spokesperson Steve Kelly pushed back on the validity of the group’s survey.
“We haven’t seen the methodology or results of this survey, but it doesn’t appear to be statistically credible or representative,” said Kelly via email.
“It also inaccurately suggests that these individuals’ opinions are more credible than the outside auditors who verify our annual sustainability report and confirm our progress,” he added. “Our commitment to being net zero carbon by 2040 is unwavering and we’re really proud of the progress we’ve made.”
Kelly also cited an internal survey of 20,000 corporate employees conducted last year in which “a vast majority” agreed with the statement that Amazon is “an environmentally responsible company.”
Amazon’s corporate workforce totaled about 350,000 in early 2023, and it employs 1.55 million people worldwide.
Most of Amazon’s carbon footprint comes from “indirect sources” that include travel, product manufacturing, shipping and transportation, and other operations. Critics allege the company is not including some emissions sources that others in the retail sector cover in their accounting.
Emissions also come from new infrastructure, including AWS data center construction and computer hardware.
To cut its climate impacts, the company is paying for clean power production in an amount that matches its electricity use. While Amazon touts its 100% clean energy accomplishment, it’s still drawing energy from the grid at times and in places where it’s almost certainly produced by fossil fuels.
Tech corporations are moving beyond wind and solar to help address those concerns. Amazon in October announced partnerships with a company called X-energy to pursue new nuclear reactors, including in Washington state.
Matt Garman, CEO of AWS, said the reactors are “a new technology around nuclear power that’s going to allow us to build smaller, self-contained power generation near data centers, near where we want, in a completely safe and scalable way.”
The company previously made a deal to acquire a data center that taps into an existing nuclear plant in Pennsylvania. Federal regulators this month denied Amazon’s request to draw additional energy from the plant.
Editor’s note: Story updated to add information on Amazon’s internal survey of employees.