How environmentally friendly is your cloud hosting?

Moving your business to the cloud is a sustainable step in itself. After all, cloud-based servers are designed to operate as efficiently as possible, and because they require less power than locally-based servers, leveraging cloud services alone will reduce your own carbon emissions. But while you’re making efficiency gains through the decisions you make within your own business, what part are your providers playing in going greener, too? To be truly sustainable in your efforts, being conscious in your choice of partnerships and providers may take some investigating.

That’s because not all cloud providers are created equal when it comes to environmental impact. While there are a number of smaller host companies out there, three cloud providers account for around two-thirds of all hosting. We looked into how these big players stack up against each other when it comes to carbon emission and energy efficiency.

Microsoft Azure

Azure went carbon-neutral in 2012, and has ambitions to hit carbon negative by the end of 2030. They’re also working towards being 100% dependent on renewable energy by 2025, and water positive by 2030. They measure their performance across four key areas of environmental impact - carbon, water, waste and ecosystems, while also supporting sustainability projects beyond the data centre walls, such as reforestation, water quality projects and urban area forestry. AI is used to optimise the efficiency of the data centres, for example using climate readings to adjust cooling systems when it’s less needed (cooling accounts for around 40% of data centre energy consumption). As a wider company, Microsoft uses policy to incentivise impact reduction through the implementation of carbon taxes. Microsoft’s sustainability calculator (launched in 2020) also offers customers transparency into their total carbon emissions resulting from their cloud usage. Locally, Microsoft announced its plans to launch the first data centre region here in Aotearoa, solidifying their intentions to bring its cloud services to increasingly local markets.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

AWS holds the largest chunk of the cloud market, and it’s probably not surprising that in 2020 Amazon was the biggest corporate buyer of renewable energy. They’re working to fulfill Amazon’s goal of 100% renewable energy use across the corporation through energy purchase agreements, and have supported the construction of 127 wind and solar farm projects around the globe. Under the co-founded Climate Pledge, Amazon is working towards a net zero carbon emissions aim by 2040, offsetting with Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs). Unfortunately their lack of transparency when it comes to reporting and roadmapping around their emissions still raises unanswered questions.

Google Cloud

Google has neutralised their carbon emissions since 1998, while matching energy consumption with renewable energy purchases since 2017. In fact, they are one of the largest corporate purchasers of renewable energy in the world, aiming to purchase from new-to-the-grid projects as a way to increase the number of renewable energy resources available. Leveraging AI to optimise their environments, Google Cloud claims to use 50% less energy than average data centres, with a 1.11 Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) score (they’re also the only provider of the three to be transparent about their PUE score). Google was also the first cloud to launch Carbon-free Energy Scores for Google Cloud regions to help users choose locations with lower carbon emissions.

So, who comes out on top?

While it’s promising to see the policies each of these businesses have in place for continual improvement, Microsoft Azure leads the pack for transparency around its efforts and its wider impact through initiatives beyond the data centre. Despite its efforts, AWS is currently the least transparent and the most laggard in terms of their targets. 

Cloud computing is a greener choice - but it’s not without its impact. Offsetting can’t be seen as a long-term solution, and continual innovation in technology and investment in renewable power is necessary to keep pace with growing demand for hosting. By using our own choices we can influence impact, demand transparency from providers and keep them accountable to targets that focus on improving global standards all round.


If you’d like to chat more about choosing the most sustainable cloud solution for your business - get in touch with the Brightly team.

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