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Amazon has jumped into sustainable investing with the launch of its Climate Pledge Fund. Seeded with $2 billion from Amazon itself, the fund aims to "accelerate investment in innovations for the zero carbon economy of the future," the company says. To do that, the fund will invest in companies that produce services and technologies that help other companies — including, actually, Amazon — meet their goal of becoming net-zero carbon.
The companies the fund invests in will be across all sizes and stages, from startups to established businesses, across multiple industries that could include transportation and logistics, energy generation, storage and utilization, manufacturing and materials, and food and agriculture.
The fund will be led Matt Peterson, Amazon's director of corporate development new initiatives and Amazon's corporate sustainability officer, Kara Hurst, according to an update by TechCrunch that cited a company spokesperson.
The fund arose of The Climate Pledge, Amazon's and Global Optimism's commitment to reach the Paris Agreement goal of keeping global temperature increases to below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Amazon and others who join the Climate Pledge pledge to be net-zero carbon by 2040. Three global companies—Verizon, Reckitt Benckiser (RB), and Infosys—also have committed to this, Amazon says.
Net-zero occurs when "emissions are balanced by absorbing an equivalent amount from the atmosphere," says the Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit, a nonprofit organisation that supports informed debate on energy and climate change issues.
The term refers to the findings of climate scientists that simply reducing emissions won't halt climate change. Emissions must be at zero — "before the end of the century, and much earlier if we want to load the probability in our favor of limiting warming to below an average 2°C," according to an article in Scientific American.
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