E-commerce giant Amazon has issued a $1 billion sustainability bond to fund ongoing and new projects in five key green spheres.

The company aims to finance green and social projects through the green, social, and sustainability bonds.

The amount raised aims to strengthen the company’s investment in renewable energy, clean transportation, sustainable buildings, affordable housing, and socioeconomic advancement and empowerment that it has made over the years, Amazon elaborated.

According to a report released by Climate Bonds Initiative, global green bond issuance reached a record high of $269.5 billion in 2020, a 1.12% increase compared to $266.5 billion in 2019. The trend was heavily influenced by the Covid-19 crisis, the report said.

The latest initiative is a part of Amazon’s new sustainable bond framework, detailing how the company aims to advance new technologies that decarbonize and preserve the natural world.

To accelerate the project, 100,000 electric delivery vehicles will be purchased, the largest order ever of electric delivery vehicles.

Last year, Amazon India had announced that its fleet of delivery vehicles in the country would include 10,000 electric vehicles by 2025.

The framework also pledges to support innovative housing affordability initiatives.

Amazon will also deploy its technology and people to reach net-zero carbon across the company by 2040, a decade ahead of the time frame mentioned in the Paris Agreement. Under the initiative, the company also plans to make all Amazon shipments net-zero carbon, intending to deliver 50% of all shipments with net-zero carbon by 2030.

The company rounded off 2020 with 26 new utility-scale wind and solar energy projects, totaling 3.4 GW of electricity production capacity. These projects paved Amazon’s way to be the world’s largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy.

The company also aims to power its operations with 100% renewable energy by 2025.

Amazon is also lending its support to the scalability and development of technologies and services that facilitate the transition to a low-carbon economy, the firm said.

As part of its social commitment, the company will increase opportunities for underrepresented groups to enter the technology workforce as well as launch, scale, and invest in skills training programs.

The company added that the number of net proceeds from the sale of any green, social, or sustainability bonds that have been allocated to one or more eligible projects would be published at regular intervals to maintain transparency of the project.

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Srinwanti is a copy editor at Mercom India, where she writes and edits news stories across the clean energy spectrum. Prior to Mercom, she has worked in book publishing at Macmillan Publishing House and Integra and honed her editorial and writing skills in both online and print media such as Reuters, Times Group Books, The Times of India, and Pune Mirror, covering local to international stories. More articles from Srinwanti Das.