Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has revealed that his company has placed an order for 100,000 electric delivery vans from Michigan-based electric vehicle company Rivian. Amazon says its order of 100,000 vehicles is the largest order ever of electric delivery vehicles. It is just one of the ways Amazon pledged on Thursday to help combat climate change.
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Amazon says that the goal with the vans is to have all 100,000 of them on the road by 2030. Yes, that’s a decade away, but the company will begin the Rivian van rollout much earlier—in 2021. By 2022, Amazon says it hopes to have 10,000 of the vehicles on the road. And once all 100,000 hit the roads by 2030, Amazon says it will save 4 million metric tons of carbon per year.
The announcement was made as part of Amazon’s Climate Pledge, which sets the goal of meeting the historic Paris Agreement 10 years early—by the year 2040. Bezos says that by 2030 it wants Amazon running on 100% renewable energy, and by 2040 it wants the company to be a net-zero carbon producer. The Paris Agreement’s goal is for companies and countries to hit these metrics by 2050.
Announcing its new set of climate action plans, Bezos said:
We’re done being in the middle of the herd on this issue—we’ve decided to use our size and scale to make a difference. If a company with as much physical infrastructure as Amazon—which delivers more than 10 billion items a year—can meet the Paris Agreement 10 years early, then any company can. I’ve been talking with other CEOs of global companies, and I’m finding a lot of interest in joining the pledge. Large companies signing The Climate Pledge will send an important signal to the market that it’s time to invest in the products and services the signatories will need to meet their commitments.
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