Amazon’s board of directors has asked its shareholders to nix a proposal that would see the company disclose more information on the impact of its data center portfolio on its sustainability goals.

According to reporting from The Register, the proposal was submitted by Brian Kariger, represented by As You Sow, a corporate responsibility non-profit, as well as Mercy Investment Services, the investor arm of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas.

In the proposal, it was cited that Amazon’s massive data center expansion of up to $150 billion over the next decade and a half could see power demand more than double. While acknowledging Amazon’s high-profile climate commitments - under its Climate Pledge, the company has committed to “net-zero carbon emissions by 2040” and “matching” 100 percent of the electricity it uses “with renewable energy by 2030" - the proposal cast doubts over the company’s capacity to meet the commitments while pursuing significant data center expansion.

“A number of factors raise concerns about Amazon’s ability to meet its climate commitments while expanding data centers for artificial intelligence. Can it achieve net-zero emissions by 2040? Amazon announced it has matched 100 percent of the electricity used in 2023 with renewable energy; can it maintain this in future years given data center expansion plans?” The proposal read.

The proposal subsequently requested that Amazon “issue a report explaining how it will meet the climate change-related commitments it has made on greenhouse gas emissions, given the massively growing energy demand from artificial intelligence and data centers that Amazon is planning to build.”

In response to the proposal, the board of directors wrote: “We already provide regular, public updates on our progress, initiatives, and work in pursuit of our climate goals, including routinely reporting on our carbon intensity and on our efforts to reduce the carbon footprint of AI workloads and make our data centers more sustainable and efficient, as detailed further below. As a result, our current public reporting already addresses the specific challenges highlighted by this proposal and makes the report requested in the proposal unnecessary.”

DCD asked AWS' head of Americas Power and Water, Brandon Oyer, how the company's massive build-out was impacting its sustainability goals in December 2025, during the AWS Re:Invent conference.

Oyer said: "We are still looking forward to 2040, and we know we have to be net zero carbon by 2040. Our customers want it, and we think it's the right thing to do, but we know it will be a non-linear path." He noted that the company is continuing to look at and invest in the likes of wind and solar projects, small modular reactors, geothermal energy, battery storage systems, and so on.

"Amazon is very stubborn on the vision but flexible on the details... nobody has thrown those [goals] out to the west, and I don't see a world where that happens."

The hyperscaler has seen its emissions spike over recent years as it strives to meet growing user demand. Last year, the firm emitted approximately 68.25 million tons of CO2, which was a six percent spike from last year. While its emissions are rising, the company has been quick to tout its achievements in renewable energy procurement. Earlier this month, the company claimed the title of Europe's largest corporate buyer of renewables, according to research from BloombergNEF.

According to the company, it now has more than 10GW of renewable energy capacity contracted within Europe, out of more than 40GW worldwide. In February, Bloomberg reported that Amazon, alongside Meta, was the largest buyer of renewable energy worldwide over the last year, contracting a combined 20.4GW, including 4.7GW of nuclear power.