Amazon would rather shareholders did not look too closely at carbon footprint
Investors urged to reject proposal for more disclosure on whether AWS expansion risks climate goals
Amazon's board of directors is urging shareholders to reject a proposal that would have the megacorp disclose more information on the impact of datacenters on its climate commitments.
The proposal is one of several shareholder suggestions in the online bazaar's proxy statement [PDF], sent to all shareholders ahead of its annual meeting next month.
It notes that Amazon has made high-profile climate commitments central to its corporate strategy, but also that the firm's cloud business aims to massively expand its infrastructure over the next several years. This calls into question whether the original commitment is realistic.
This proposal was submitted by Brian Kariger, represented by As You Sow, a nonprofit that advocates corporate responsibility, and Mercy Investment Services, the investor arm of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas.
With its Climate Pledge, Amazon committed to "net-zero carbon emissions by 2040" and match 100 percent of its electricity use with renewable energy by 2030, the proposal says.
While Amazon claims to have met the latter commitment in 2023, the shareholders behind the proposal question whether the company will be able to maintain this in the coming years, given the huge datacenter expansion planned by its Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud division.
Earlier this year, CEO Andy Jassy told investors that Amazon had added 3.9 gigawatts of compute capacity during 2025, and he expects to double that by the end of 2027, spending $200 billion on infrastructure during 2026. That's more than the entire gross domestic product of some mid-sized national economies, according to statistics available from the IMF.
All of that extra infrastructure needs power, and the proposal notes that utilities in states such as Virginia – the datacenter capital of the world – now have to build new gas-powered generator plants to meet the growing demand, or even keep coal-fired facilities online. All of this is pumping millions of tons of extra greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
As a result, Amazon faces questions over how it intends to deliver on its climate promises. The company relies heavily on renewable energy credits (RECs), according to the proposal, which asks whether the volume purchased will increase and whether enough will be available. Amazon's investors would benefit from analysis that explains how the company will tackle those concerns, it states.
As The Register has previously reported, hyperscalers are not being entirely transparent about their carbon footprint, and AWS was accused of being the worst offender.
Amazon's board of directors recommends that shareholders vote against the proposal for more detailed reporting on the impact of datacenters on the its climate commitments.
We asked Amazon why it is urging shareholders to reject the proposal and whether it believes existing disclosures are sufficient to reassure investors.
Instead, a spokesperson simply referred us to the board's response in the proxy statement, which essentially says Amazon believes the report requested in the proposal is unnecessary.
"We already provide regular, public updates on our progress, initiatives, and work in pursuit of our climate goals, including routinely reporting on our carbon intensity and on our efforts to reduce the carbon footprint of AI workloads and make our datacenters more sustainable and efficient," the text says.
"As a result, our current public reporting already addresses the specific challenges highlighted by this proposal and makes the report requested in the proposal unnecessary."
Last year, AWS was part of a body of datacenter operators that published a report critical of the EU's plans to introduce minimum performance standards for the sustainability of server farms. ®