eBay have published their inaugural Climate Transition Plan. This plan serves as a comprehensive roadmap detailing how the company will advance sustainable commerce, reduce emissions across its operations and value chain, and achieve its long-term climate commitments.

eBay’s Climate Transition focus

At eBay, we believe the future of commerce and the future of our planet are deeply connected. Building on our recommerce legacy, our Climate Transition Plan showcases how we will achieve net-zero emissions by 2045 while supporting a low-carbon economy. It reflects eBay’s long-standing commitment to climate resiliency, creating enduring value for our customers and community.

– Renée Morin, Chief Sustainability Officer, eBay

Speaking to Renée , she said there were two focuses of the plan – firstly the lens where they looking at eBay as a company, but the part that’s perhaps not so obvious is what eBay have done looking forward and how will it impact business in next 20-30 years. Renée is looking at every aspect of eBay and considering how their Climate Transition Plan connects to the business looking forward.

Recommerce

eBay has always been a world leader in recommerce (before recommerce even became a word!). Looking back over 30 year, Renée remembers that eBay started with recommerce, broken laser pointer and today over 40% of eBay’s business is recommerce and they continue to advance with buyers and sellers. If you want to know what to expect in 2026, look back to 2025 at eBay’s cool activations and expect to continue to see more of that.

Getting to the climate side, eBay will soon be reporting on 2025 in their impact report and Renée is very confident that the company will be hitting their recommerce goals. Next is to step back to look at the next five years to reframe new goals (although they may look very similar to what they’ve already achieved).

Marketplace Deliveries

There are many things eBay can’t control and a big one is delivery partners (Scope 3 impacts). Here eBay are are reimagining how goods move through a combination of carrier collaboration, customer-focused incentives, and innovation. As an example, here in the UK in 2024, eBay partnered with EVRi to expand the use of electric vans.

Green Energy

But the world continues to change and innovate – AI is today’s buzzword and we have eBay magical listings and the AI Activate programme with OpenAI, but AI is massively power hungry. Renée says an emphatic “Yes” when asked if eBay have enough green energy. They announced in 2024 that their renewable energy goal was met and their ambition is to maintain that.

eBay’s largest use of energy is for datacenters and they have relationships with colocation partners that have green energy in place – eBay have invested in 3 virtual power purchase agreements with additional buffers, allowing runway for their future use of renewable energy. And there are programmes in place such as like investing in San Jose clean energy – eBay are well prepared and Renée’s team is in close contact with datacenter teams to continue this work.

How can eBay sellers reduce or eliminate their carbon footprint

There have been many moments and seller events where Renée has been invited to share tips and tricks, and she shared that one of the things people don’t always recognise is every small thing you do all adds up so start small. If you can take cost out by reducing your energy usage of gas and electricity, or take waste out of the system, small changes can make a big difference.

Renée also says that for eBay business sellers there are so many local resources in communities that allow businesses to run more efficiently – Using local resourses can be a real unlock for these businesses.

Finally, to give you a start, Renée points to the eBay Seller centre education module on how to run a sustainable business for a nice framework for the three essential steps: calculating your business’s carbon footprint, setting goals, and reducing emissions