Amazon.com, Inc. – Sakshi Jindal – 2021

Goals

As part of Amazon’s commitment to The Climate Pledge to become net-zero carbon by 2040, Amazon is looking for ways to reduce carbon throughout its building and real-estate portfolio. Sakshi was selected to understand and reduce the embodied carbon of materials used in building construction, goal setting, and roadmap for kick-starting this effort for New constructions in Amazon India.

Solutions

• Conducted a market study through a manufacturer’s survey to understanding the availability of low embodied carbon materials and market challenges that will impact the achievability of the goal.
• Evaluated the embodied carbon through a pilot project study and created a roadmap with periodic goals cross-referenced with the Life Cycle Analysis of a building and Scope 3 emissions.
• Evaluated the current processes and prepared detailed process updates to incorporate the low embodied practices in design, construction, use, and end of life stage of a project together with data collection required in ongoing projects for the Scope 3 calculations.

Potential Impact

With the market survey, a potential for collaboration with international organizations was identified to spearhead greater transparency and disclosure of carbon emissions of materials in the AEC industry for the Indian market.

2020 CO2 emissions estimates from building construction materials in India is around 367,000 metric tonnes. Based on this, a roadmap was created to meet 2040’s NET-Zero target and recommendations were made for technological advancement, capacity building, full-time resource engagement, benchmarking, and other internal process strategies for the short-term and long-term durations.