As AI and other cloud technologies become more integrated into business strategy and demand goes up, the demand for energy-guzzling data centres does too.
However, despite the bad press that data centres get in the sustainability space, cloud-driven sustainability can have an incredibly positive impact on a company’s strategy and result.
Cloud sustainability companies focus on developing solutions to boost efficiency, offering a range of services from optimising data centre operations to providing tools for measuring and reducing carbon emissions associated with cloud usage.
Many of these companies leverage artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced analytics to help businesses minimise their energy consumption, often providing software that can automatically adjust resource allocation, powering down unused servers and optimising workloads for maximum efficiency.
As organisations increasingly prioritise sustainability in their operations, cloud sustainability companies are positioned to play a crucial role in balancing the growing demand for cloud services with environmental responsibility.
Their innovations are helping to shape a more sustainable future for the digital economy.
10. Alibaba Cloud
CEO: Eddie Yongming Wu
Product: Energy Expert
Alibaba Cloud’s carbon management platform, Energy Expert, enables companies to track, analyse and reduce their carbon emissions across complex supply chains and operations.
The platform utilises advanced AI and machine learning algorithms to process vast amounts of data, providing real-time insights and actionable recommendations for sustainability improvements.
This supports large companies like Unilever, the multinational consumer goods company, to gain unprecedented visibility into its environmental impact and monitor emissions from thousands of suppliers, manufacturing facilities and distribution centres in real-time.
“Energy Expert is designed to help companies achieve their carbon neutrality goals through advanced technologies and streamlined solutions,” says Chen Lijuan, General Manager of Product and Solutions at Alibaba Cloud Intelligence.
“We hope our proven innovation can be helpful for our global customers to achieve their net zero targets through insightful actions and informed sustainability practices.”
9. DigitalOcean
CEO: Paddy Srinivasan
Product: Droplets
DigitalOcean has carved out a niche in the cloud computing market by focusing on simplicity and efficiency – the company’s cloud infrastructure is designed to maximise resource utilisation and minimise energy consumption.
One of DigitalOcean's key sustainability features is its use of advanced virtualisation technologies that allow multiple virtual machines to run on a single physical server, significantly improving hardware utilisation and reducing energy consumption.
The company also employs sophisticated power management systems in its data centres, automatically adjusting server power usage based on demand to minimise idle energy consumption.
DigitalOcean says: “We believe that environmentally responsible operating practices will serve to benefit investors, customers, employees and partners alike.
“We strive to incorporate sustainability into our business wherever possible, from product development to data centre selection.
“We continue to look for and adopt new ways in which we can positively address sustainability challenges.”
8. SAP
CEO: Christian Klein
Chief Sustainability Officer: Daniel Schmid
Product: Sustainability Control Tower
SAP’s Sustainability Control Tower is a comprehensive solution that integrates ESG data from across an organisation, providing a holistic view of sustainability performance and enabling data-driven decision-making for improved environmental outcomes.
The Sustainability Control Tower leverages SAP's expertise in data management and analytics to automate the collection, processing and reporting of sustainability data. It incorporates advanced features such as AI-driven predictive analytics to forecast future sustainability trends and identify potential risks and opportunities.
The platform also includes built-in compliance tools to ensure adherence to evolving global sustainability regulations and reporting standards.
“The release of SAP Sustainability Control Tower represents another key milestone on our mission to establish the ‘green line’ alongside the top and bottom lines as key dimensions of performance,” says Gunther Rothermel, head of SAP S/4HANA Sustainability Management.
“Based on the power of SAP Business Technology Platform, the solution provides the necessary agility and flexibility to quickly adapt to evolving and changing requirements without having to write code.”
7. Meta
CEO: Mark Zuckerberg
Global Head of Net Zero and Sustainability: Blair Swedeen
Product: Meta Sustainability Cloud
Meta has been at the forefront of developing sustainable technologies for its massive data centre operations, including a AI-powered data centre cooling system that significantly reduces energy consumption while maintaining optimal operating conditions for servers.
Since 2020, Meta has maintained net zero GHG emissions in its global operations and has committed to achieving net zero emissions across the value chain, as well as becoming water positive in 2030.
“Meta believes sustainability is about more than operating responsibly; it is an opportunity to support the communities we are part of and have a positive impact on the world,” says Blair Swedeen, Global Head of Net Zero and Sustainability at Meta.
“The mission of our Net Zero and Sustainability Team is to enable Meta to operate and grow sustainably and responsibly.”
6. Oracle
CEO: Safra Catz
Chief Sustainability Officer: Jon Chorley
Product: Oracle Environmental Accounting and Reporting
Oracle Cloud’s sustainability management platform enables organisations to track, manage and report on a wide range of ESG metrics, providing a holistic view of sustainability performance across complex business operations.
By leveraging advanced analytics, Internet of Things (IoT) integration and AI, the platform provides real-time insights and predictive capabilities. It can ingest data from various sources, including energy management systems, supply chain operations and financial systems to create a unified sustainability dashboard.
The platform also includes features for scenario planning, allowing companies to model the potential impacts of different sustainability initiatives.
“Sustainability is a critical component of how we operate the Oracle Cloud,” says Jon Chorley, Chief Sustainability Officer at Oracle.
“That enables customers to migrate either apps or infrastructure and decommission at least some of their privately operated servers. By doing nothing more than that, our customers’ workloads will consume less power while helping them realise cost savings and security benefits.”
5. IBM
CEO: Arvind Krishna
Chief Sustainability Officer: Christina Shim
Product: IBM Environmental Intelligence Suite
IBM’s Environmental Intelligence Suite leverages advanced AI and analytics to help organisations predict and respond to climate risks, optimise resource usage and reduce their environmental impact.
IBM says: “Companies face rising climate-related risks, with 87% of leaders increasing sustainability investments, US$380bn in disaster losses and 90% of large companies at risk by 20503.
“A data-driven approach for climate adaptation is crucial for safeguarding operations”
The Environmental Intelligence Suite combines weather data, climate risk analytics and operational data to provide actionable insights, using machine learning algorithms to process vast amounts of information including satellite imagery, IoT sensor data and historical climate patterns.
The suite can forecast weather-related risks, model climate change scenarios and recommend adaptive strategies to mitigate environmental impacts.
Christina Shim, Chief Sustainability Officer at IBM, says: “IBM serves as client zero for many of the technologies it brings to market, leveraging our own solutions and innovations to make a lasting, positive impact through sustainability and in our business.
“From minimising climate-related risks to creating and implementing industry solutions that harness the power of AI and hybrid cloud, we will create more pathways to better conserve natural resources and reduce environmental impact."
4. Equinix
CEO: Adaire Fox-Martin
Vice President, Global Sustainability: Christopher Wellise
Product: Equinix Green Data Centers
Equinix, a global leader in data centre and interconnection services, has made significant strides in sustainable cloud infrastructure with its commitment to 100% renewable energy usage across its operations alongside its goal to be climate neutral by 2030.
This initiative goes beyond purchasing renewable energy credits; Equinix has invested heavily in on-site renewable energy generation and innovative power purchase agreements to ensure a direct and additive impact on the global renewable energy supply.
The company says: “Equinix data centres are designed with high operational standards and energy efficiency in mind. We have invested more than US$129m in energy efficiency upgrades, retrofits and improvements and are constantly seeking new ways to innovate within our data centres.”
Equinix's green data centres incorporate advanced cooling systems that use outside air economisation, reducing the need for energy-intensive mechanical cooling.
The company also employs high-efficiency uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) and implements sophisticated power usage effectiveness (PUE) monitoring to continually optimise energy consumption.
“We believe Equinix is exceptionally well positioned to meet the rapidly evolving needs of customers as they embrace digital transformation,” says Keith Taylor, Chief Financial Officer at Equinix.
“The demand for digital infrastructure in support of this priority is as strong as ever and the nature of this demand is playing to our strengths as customers seek to implement hybrid architectures that are more distributed, more cloud connected and more sustainable than ever before.”
3. Amazon Web Services (AWS)
CEO: Matt Garman
Sustainability Leader: Hilary Tam
Product: AWS Customer Carbon Footprint Tool
Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) Carbon Footprint Tool enables organisations to measure, track and reduce their cloud-related carbon emissions with unprecedented accuracy and ease.
The AWS Carbon Footprint Tool provides a comprehensive view of an organisation's carbon emissions associated with its AWS usage. It breaks down emissions by service, region and time period, allowing for granular analysis and targeted reduction efforts.
The tool uses complex algorithms that consider factors such as energy mix in different regions, hardware efficiency, and server utilisation rates to provide highly accurate emissions estimates.
The tool integrates with AWS's broader suite of sustainability features — including the ability to choose renewable energy-powered regions and optimise workloads for energy efficiency — and provides recommendations for reducing emissions, such as suggesting more efficient instance types or identifying idle resources that can be shut down.
2. Microsoft
CEO: Satya Nadella
Chief Sustainability Officer: Melanie Nakagawa
Product: Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability
One of Microsoft Azure's flagship sustainability tools is the Carbon Footprint Tool, which enables organisations to measure, track and reduce their cloud-related carbon emissions with unprecedented accuracy. The tool provides a granular view of emissions by service, region and time period, allowing for targeted reduction efforts.
Microsoft itself has been under pressure to reduce its carbon emissions after it saw a 30.9% rise in Scope 3 emissions driven by the construction of more data centres to support its increased use of AI and other cloud technologies.
“With Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability, we have enabled organisations to accelerate sustainability progress and business growth by bringing together ESG capabilities from Microsoft and our global ecosystem of partners,” says Melanie Nakagawa, Microsoft's Chief Sustainability Officer.
“Together we provide tools to customers such as Ingredion, the BBC, Grupo Bimbo and many others to gather actionable insights needed to transform their business operations for a more sustainable future.”
1. Google Cloud
CEO: Thomas Kurian
Managing Director of Global Sustainability: Justin Keeble
Product: Carbon Footprint
Google Cloud's Carbon Footprint tool provides customers with detailed information about their cloud-based carbon emissions, allowing organisations to monitor and reduce their IT-related emissions with unprecedented accuracy.
Additionally, Google's commitment to operating on 100% renewable energy and its innovative approaches, such as using AI to optimise data centre cooling, have resulted in Google Cloud data centres being twice as energy efficient as the average enterprise data centre.
“Sustainability has been part of Google’s DNA since our founding,” explains Kate Brandt, Google’s Chief Sustainability Officer.
“In this role, I am grateful to be in the position to lead Google’s efforts to achieve its sustainability goals across our business through both our products and our operations.
“A CSO’s daily work is no longer simply confined to decarbonizing our businesses, or developing solutions that help others in their sustainability journeys.
“Some of the key questions for CSOs today have become how we successfully balance compliance with innovation, how we can partner internally to effect real change for the benefit of the business and how we embed sustainability into core business priorities.
“At Google, we’re focused on solving the problems we are uniquely placed to address by empowering individuals, businesses, organisations and governments with quality information through our products and platforms and by helping drive systems change to accelerate climate action.”
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