AWS is in no hurry to disclose real data on data center emissions, and Google and Microsoft are not behaving any better

Since more and more companies transfer workloads to the cloud, the environmental indicators of the clouds themselves become important for their leadership. But AWS, as it turned out, is in no hurry to share data on emissions with clients, reports The Register. According to Canlys, Amazon decided not to disclose detailed information related to AWS environmental indicators, but provided them for the rest of the units. Canlys consider AWS the main “bad”, although Google and Microsoft behave a little better.

Canalys emphasize that in recent years the emissions have increased significantly, and not only among hyperskeys. The nuance is that they are probably more than seven times higher than officially declared. This is largely due to the practices of taking into account the emissions used by hyperskealers – they often “mask” the situation, indicating in reporting emissions that are compensated by “green” certificates for the purchase of renewable energy. The same Amazon does not publish data with reference to the location of the AWS data centers, so it is almost impossible to find out the real numbers.

Image source: Sam Jotham Sutharson/unsplash.com

The company deliberately does not highlight AWS reporting. It began producing ESG reports a few years ago, but compared to reports from Google and Microsoft, Amazon’s statistics are very optimistic – emissions, according to the company, have been declining since 2021, although AWS is growing at a rapid pace. By the end of 2024, the company’s capital expenditures may exceed $75 billion, and in 2025 they will become even higher. Most of the funds will go to cloud infrastructure. At the same time, Microsoft’s emissions have increased by almost 30% since 2020, and Google’s emissions have increased by 48% since 2019.

In an interview with The Register, a Canalys spokesperson noted that data is only available on total emissions from Amazon, including the giant retail division. Amazon has only said that it has taken a number of steps to reduce its data center carbon footprint, and last year offset 100% of its energy costs by purchasing renewable energy, which significantly reduced Scope 2 emissions. Microsoft also only publishes overall emissions data, but still singles out Scope 1, 2 and 3. The company did not answer The Register’s question about data center emissions. Google also prefers not to highlight data centers from general statistics.

Image source: Amazon

Canalys believes that reporting transparency is becoming increasingly important when clients choose cloud service providers. However, AWS continues to lag behind competitors by not providing Scope 3 emissions data. This could pose problems especially for customers in the European Union with its Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) requiring relevant information.

Not so long ago, the Uptime Institute reported that the priority development of AI threatens the non -fulfillment of obligations to achieve zero emission of greenhouse gases in the declared time. A year ago, experts predicted the refusal of the data center from previous “green” promises and concealing environmental indicators.