Amazon will make a first-round investment from its $2 billion Climate Pledge Fund to 5 firms that have the technology to help the eCommerce giant in its aim to achieve zero net emissions by 2040.
The companies that are receiving investments from Amazon’s fund are Redwood Materials, Rivian, TurnTide Technologies, CarbonCure and Pachama.
In June, as part of attempts to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, Amazon made a $2 billion pledge. The retail giant said last September it would slash or capture all of its planet-heating pollution by 2040, hitting net-zero emissions.
Jeff Bezos, CEO – Amazon
“I am excited to announce that we are investing in a group of companies that are channeling their entrepreneurial energy into helping Amazon and other companies reach net zero by 2040 and keep the planet safer for future generations.”
Rivian
Amazon revealed its purchase of 100,000 Electric Vehicles (EV) from Rivian, which is a beneficiary of Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund, as part of its climate commitment announced last September. The first 10,000 of those are expected to reach the road by next year, says Amazon, with the remainder arriving by 2030. Rivian is now one of the world’s richest EV startups, raising more than $5 billion in under two years.
Redwood Materials
If the technology and collaboration progresses as expected, Redwood Materials, the battery and e-waste recycling company founded by JB Straubel will help Amazon cope with the batteries that its expected fleet of electric delivery vans will eventually leave behind.
Electric vehicles would be crucial in the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. But when lithium-ion rechargeable batteries like those in Rivian’s EVs get thrown out, they do more than just leave behind a huge mess. A “thermal runaway” chemical process can cause the battery to heat up until it burns or explodes. And on top of catastrophic environmental disruption, mining for cobalt to create new batteries has been related to child labor abuses.
This is where Redwood Materials and their technology for battery recycling comes in. Straubel’s emphasis is now on significantly reducing battery manufacturing costs and thus electric cars, by extracting materials from old batteries.
He plans to reduce the cost of battery raw materials to half the price of newly extracted materials within the next ten years, reports claim. In turn, the effort serves two objectives: to speed up the transition to greener electric vehicles and to reduce the amount of pollution and mining that may come with more EVs on the road.
TurnTide Technologies
Another business that Amazon is pouring capital into will bring down the carbon footprint from its buildings. In order to minimize energy usage, Amazon will finance Turntide Technologies, which produces more powerful motors and is piloting some of Turntide’s engines in its own buildings.
CarbonCure
This is a business that tackles a major construction problem: the cement industry is responsible for producing up to 8 percent of global greenhouse gases every year. CarbonCure is developing technologies to trap CO2 in concrete and isolate it.
Pachama
The fifth company Amazon has announced support for, Pachama. Using satellites and AI Pachama checks carbon emissions. By investing in forest protection, one of the ways Amazon seeks to minimize its effects on the environment is betting on trees to absorb and store carbon that humans have released into the atmosphere. But before a business like Amazon can use a forest to write off its emissions, it has to make sure it doesn’t miscount such carbon reductions. Pachama works to help businesses keep their records clean. Especially because forest offset projects don’t have a great track record of success.
Amazon has a lot of work to do to minimize the harm to the world, apart from these investments. As its revenues rose, it emitted 15 percent more greenhouse gases last year than the year before, according to data.
