Amazon Buying Hundreds Of Compressed Natural Gas Trucks: Reuters

Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN has ordered more than 700 delivery trucks that run on compressed natural gas, as it tries to reduce its carbon footprint, Reuters has reported.

What Happened: A joint venture between Cummins Inc. CMI and Westport Fuel Systems Inc WPRT will supply the engines. Amazon told Reuters that it has ordered more than 700 trucks so far.

An unnamed source also told Reuters that the Cummins-Westport JV has ordered more than 1,000 engines in total.

The trucks will be used for deliveries between warehouses and distribution centers.

Why It Matters: Amazon aims to have net-zero carbon emissions across the whole company by 2040. And it aims to have 50% of all shipments be net zero by 2030.

The pandemic caused an uptick in heavy duty truck traffic, as more people and businesses relied on e-commerce and deliveries, Reuters noted. Natural gas burns about 27% cleaner than the diesel fuel used in big trucks.