- General
- December 2, 2020
- 5 minutes read
Uber, JetBlue Join Amazon’s Climate Pledge
The e-commerce giant Amazon has announced that 18 companies have now joined its Climate Pledge Initiative which is a commitment to…
The e-commerce giant Amazon has announced that 18 companies have now joined its Climate Pledge Initiative which is a commitment to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement on climate change ten years early. The number was bolstered by sign-ups from new companies including the ride-hailing company Uber and the low-cost airline JetBlue
Along with Uber and JetBlue, the Spanish ride-hailing company Cabify, the electric carmaker Rivian, and the aerospace startup Boom Supersonic which is looking to bring back supersonic travel with sustainable aviation fuels, signed up for Amazon’s Climate Pledge.
From the new pledge, JetBlue and Uber stand out given that JetBlue is the seventh-largest airline in North America by annual passenger count and burns lots of fossil fuel to sustain its operations while Uber is a mammoth global ride-hailing network whose drivers burn lots of fossil fuel to sustain their work.
Uber has already committed to be a fully zero-emission platform by 2040, an ambitious commitment given that it operates in many countries where the adoption of electric vehicles is currently close to nil. The ride-hailing company had previously set a goal to facilitate only electric vehicle rides by 2030 in U.S., Canadian, and European cities.
JetBlue is notably the first airline to join Amazon’s Climate Pledge. In recent years, the company has boosted its climate initiatives and this July became the first and only US airline to achieve carbon neutrality for all domestic flights. Its next aim is to offset the emissions of 7 million metric tons of C02 each year, an amount that’s comparable to removing over 1.5 million passenger vehicles from the road.
Amazon co-founded The Climate Pledge just last year with a climate-focused organization named Global Optimism. Since then, it’s attracted signees including Mercedes Benz, Verizon, Schneider Electric, Best Buy, and now Uber, JetBlue, Rivian, Cabify, and Boom Supersonic.
Climate change has long been a focus of Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos, who further proved so with a recent donation of nearly $800 million to over a dozen climate change-focused non-profits.
Photo: Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi by Hubert Burda Media is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
