Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos Earmarks Grants Worth Nearly $800M To Tackle Climate Change

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has committed to giving grants worth $791 million to 16 organizations that work towards protecting the environment, as part of his Bezos Earth Fund.

In an Instagram post on Monday, Bezos said he is inspired by these organizations’ efforts to save the environment and wants to help them scale. This is part of the Amazon founder’s $10 billion pledge to promote scientists, NGOs and organizations invested in climate change.

“I have spent the past several months learning from a group of incredibly smart people who have made it their life’s work to fight climate change and its impact on communities around the world,” Bezos’ Instagram post read.

These organizations include big NGOs, labs and climate activist groups. These are The Climate and Clean Energy Equity Fund, ClimateWorks Foundation, Dream Corps Green For All, Eden Reforestation Projects, Energy Foundation, Environmental Defense Fund, The Hive Fund for Climate and Gender Justice, Natural Resources Defense Council, The Nature Conservancy, NDN Collective, Rocky Mountain Institute, Salk Institute for Biological Studies, The Solutions Project, Union of Concerned Scientists, World Resources Institute, and World Wildlife Fund.

Amazon and Bezos have been under fire for not taking action to tackle climate change, both by customers and its own employees. The company has especially been criticized for the impact of its ‘faster’ shipping on the environment.

In May 2019, employees wrote to the company asking to commit more to the cause of the climate and staged a walkout. Following this, Amazon signed ‘The Climate Pledge’, which is the online retailer’s commitment to becoming 100% powered by renewable energy by 2025. The company has also promised to be a net-zero carbon company by 2040, 10 years earlier than the Paris agreement. For its deliveries, the company has bought as many as 100,000 electric delivery vehicles to bring emissions under check, to be deployed on the roads by 2024.

On its Climate Pledge journey, the company will overhaul its transportation network globally. It has invested in a series of electric charging stations. Amazon also said it will add 1,800 electric delivery vehicles to its fleet in Europe in 2020, and 10,000 electric delivery vehicles in India by 2025.

The $10 billion Bezos’ has committed will come from his personal wealth, which stands around $184 billion presently.

Amazon also bought the naming rights to the historic Seattle Arena, which is now renamed to ‘Climate Pledge Arena’, as a “regular reminder of the urgent need for climate action."

“We can all protect Earth’s future by taking bold action now,” his post read.