Amazon has become the first company to bypass a global standard for verifying carbon offsets, developed by a non-profit largely funded by Jeff Bezos, the founder and executive chair of the technology conglomerate.
As reported by Reuters, Amazon is supporting the creation of a new standard that could help the online retailer and cloud-computing provider address the shortage of high-quality carbon offsets, enabling it to reduce its net greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2040. Critics are concerned that this move might cause market confusion and compromise carbon offset standards.
Amazon informed Reuters that it has completed work on Abacus, a framework for verifying the quality of carbon offsets in reforestation and agroforestry. This standard was developed in collaboration with carbon registry Verra, as an alternative to the one created by the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM), the largest coalition of private sector and environmental groups dedicated to validating carbon offsets. Verra first revealed its partnership with Amazon and its Abacus working group in 2022.
Through his $10-billion Earth Fund, Bezos is one of ICVCM’s biggest donors, having contributed at least $11 million to ICVCM and its sister organisation, the Voluntary Carbon Markets Integrity Initiative, since their inception in 2021.
Jamey Mulligan, Amazon’s head of carbon neutralisation, stated in an interview that while the company evaluated and supported ICVCM’s efforts, it sought a more ambitious standard. “We want to ensure that every credit investment has a real, conservatively quantified, and verified impact on emissions,” Mulligan said.