Amazon’s chief sustainability officer, Kara Hurst, has acknowledged that the company does not yet know how it will achieve its target of net-zero carbon emissions by 2040. The admission highlights the difficulty of decarbonising a vast business spanning cloud computing, AI, aviation, agriculture and construction, while raising questions about how much responsibility major corporations should bear alongside governments.

Amazon has invested heavily in clean energy and has a 42-gigawatt clean-power portfolio, but its carbon intensity increased in 2025 compared with 2024. Its climate credentials have also been weakened by plans for a 7.65-gigawatt natural-gas power plant for an AI data-centre campus, potentially producing up to 33 million tonnes of carbon dioxide annually. The article argues that Amazon’s pursuit of AI-driven growth demonstrates the limits of relying on markets and cheaper clean energy alone to deliver emissions reductions.