Celebrating the sustainability initiatives by the tech giants

The giant cloud players have used their scale to push forward on renewable purchasing and other sustainability initiatives.

Serverfarm backs all real actions to boost data center efficiency and to reduce GHG emissions. We’re committed to doing everything in our power to tackle climate change, including supporting commitments around carbon emissions reductions from across the industry.

In the last couple of years, a seemingly plentiful supply of renewable energy has allowed hyperscale data center operators to buy solar- and wind-generated power along with RECs (Renewable Energy Certificates) and PPAs (Power Purchase Agreements) to support environmentally friendly policies and hit aggressive zero-carbon-footprint targets.

The power capacity required by hyperscale data centers runs to terawatts and the operators have done an excellent job of defining net zero carbon policies, sourcing renewable power and directly investing in solar and wind farms to keep their data centers operating.

Purchasing electricity generated from renewables has resulted in companies such as Google and Apple securing power to match their data center energy consumption. We will let Amazon and Google work out who became the largest purchaser of renewable energy in 2020.

The hyperscalers are accomplishing some amazing sustainability-related goals. Below, we offer some extracts from sustainability reports and information on the latest initiatives by big tech companies.

“We are driving down Scope 1 and 2 emissions to near zero by the middle of this decade, focusing on our direct and indirect emissions from our facilities and datacenters through the following methods:

Zero carbon power and diesel-free generation: We are working to scale up our consumption of zero carbon energy in our campuses and datacenters. . We will shift to low-carbon standby power systems including battery storage, and low-carbon fuel such as hydrogen, building on a successful test in 2020 using hydrogen fuel cells as backup power for datacenters.

Zero carbon transport

Improving energy efficiency in data centers

. Microsoft has been supporting the EU’s efforts to develop a policy proposal on climate neutral datacenters. We also helped commission a major think tank study on datacenter energy efficiency issues for use in advocacy efforts and are helping create dedicated trade association projects in Brussels and Dublin to engage in the related policy efforts.

. Our datacenters will roll out a global initiative to train employees on company-wide and site-specific procedures to operationalize zero waste.”

Read Microsoft’s full sustainability report at this link.

IBM

IBM has committed to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. In early 2021, it announced detailed actions it is taking now and those it will take in the future to reach that lofty goal. It began with a commitment to reduce GHG emission by 65% within four years.

IBM said: “What’s most important in the fight against climate change is to actually reduce emissions. The company’s net zero goal is also accompanied by a specific, numerical target for residual emissions that are likely to remain after IBM has first done all it can across its operations to reduce.”

IBM Research has launched a Future of Climate initiative designed to accelerate the discovery of solutions to address the impacts of a changing climate.

IBM will buy 75% of the electricity it consumes by 2025 and 90% of its procured power from renewable sources by 2030. The target is based on the energy the company can actually consume, not on the purchase of unrelated, unbundled renewable energy certificates.

Importantly, IBM said “its net zero pledge also establishes near-term targets to drive accountability and progress now. It is transparent in terms of how the company calculates and reports renewable energy use.”

In January, IBM joined the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium.

In June 2020, AWS released ...