This carbon intensity value is in line with the targets we are developing through the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi), the industry leader in helping companies set science-based emissions reduction targets. While Amazon’s business grew significantly in 2020 and our absolute carbon emissions increased 19% during the same period, our overall carbon intensity decreased 16%, from 122.8 grams of CO 2e per dollar of GMS in 2019 to 102.7 grams of CO 2e per dollar of GMS in 2020. This metric is helpful to assess our progress toward our Climate Pledge goal of reaching net-zero carbon by 2040, even as our business grows.
It is a metric commonly used to benchmark performance year over year, as it provides a relative comparison between annual metrics regardless of other changes to our business. Our carbon intensity metric quantifies total carbon emissions, in grams of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO₂e), per dollar of gross merchandise sales (GMS). Like many companies and countries in high growth mode, we consider both the absolute tons of carbon in our footprint and the change in our carbon intensity.
Our renewable energy investments made Amazon the world’s largest corporate buyer of renewable energy in 2020, and we achieved 65% renewable energy across our operations, up from 42% in 2019. We also saw a decrease in the absolute emissions from purchased electricity-a result of our investments in global renewable energy projects that came online in 2020-despite increasing our buildings square footage to keep pace with our business growth. While Amazon’s 2020 carbon footprint reflects the growth of our business to meet increasing customer demand during the COVID-19 pandemic, we made significant progress in reducing the carbon intensity of our business activities in 2020, following our investments in large-scale, long-term decarbonization solutions.
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