Amazon founder Jeff Bezos announced Monday that he will give $791 million in grants as part of his Bezos Earth Fund to 16 organizations that are working to protect the environment.The fund is part of the CEO’s $10 billion pledge to support scientists, activists, NGOs and organizations working to protect the environment.”I’ve spent the past several months learning from a group of incredibly smart people who’ve made it their life’s work to fight climate change and its impact on communities around the world,” Bezos wrote in an Instagram post on Monday announcing the news. “I’m inspired by what they’re doing, and excited to help them scale.”
The ClimateWorks Foundation received $50 million from the Bezos Earth Fund, and said it will use the grant to “drive climate action in the transportation and industrial sectors, which combined generate half of global greenhouse-gas emissions,” according to a press release. This is relevant to Amazon, which uses delivery vehicles to move products to and from warehouses and to customers’ homes and Amazon pickup points.
Bezos also gave $100 million to the Natural Resources Defense Council, $100 million to The Nature Conservancy, $43 million to The Hive Fund for Climate and Gender Justice, and $15 million to the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Prior to announcing the Bezos Earth Fund, in September 2019 Amazon announced The Climate Pledge, a commitment to have a net zero carbon footprint across its businesses by 2040, a decade earlier than promised in the Paris Accord.
Bezos, the richest person in the world, is currently worth an estimated $183 billion, according to Forbes estimates. He has sold $10 billion worth of Amazon shares in 2020 alone.
Here is the full list of Bezos Earth Fund recipients:
- The Climate and Clean Energy Equity Fund: $43 million
- ClimateWorks Foundation: $50 million
- Dream Corps Green For All: $10 million
- Eden Reforestation Projects: $5 million
- Energy Foundation: $30 million
- Environmental Defense Fund: $100 million
- The Hive Fund for Climate and Gender Justice: $43 million
- Natural Resources Defense Council: $100 million
- The Nature Conservancy: $100 million
- NDN Collective: $12 million
- Rocky Mountain Institute: $10 million
- Salk Institute for Biological Studies: $30 million
- The Solutions Project: $43 million
- Union of Concerned Scientists: $15 million
- World Resources Institute: $100 million
- World Wildlife Fund: $100 million
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