Indian firms can cut carbon emission by 80 pc if move to Cloud

As top Cloud vendors aim to cut carbon footprint for a green future, the report, commissioned by Amazon Web Services (AWS) that is leading the efforts towards reducing carbon footprints, found that cloud service providers that tap into the local renewable energy market to run their operations in India can further boost carbon emissions savings.

"With India's vibrant startup ecosystem already pioneering low carbon solutions, it is imperative that enterprises, public sector organisations and policy makers factor in sustainability as a critical part of their cloud migration decisions," said Puneet Chandok, President Commercial Business -- AWS India and South Asia, AISPL.

"I invite companies and organisations in India to join us in 'The Climate Pledge', committing to regular reporting, carbon elimination and credible offsets, on a journey to becoming net-zero carbon by 2040," Chandok added.

The report by 451 Research, a unit of S&P Global Market Intelligence, estimated that if just 25 per cent of the 1,200 largest publicly-traded businesses in India put one megawatt (MW) of compute workload into the cloud, powered by renewable energy, it would save the equivalent of a year's worth of emissions from 160,000 Indian households.

"As data centre activity continues to surge in India, so will energy consumption, which will make energy efficiency a focal point in the market," said Kelly Morgan, Research Director, Datacenter Infrastructure & Services at 451 Research.

AWS said its server systems are designed for power optimisation and use the latest component technology. AWS is also innovating the design of cooling systems to reduce water use and utilises real-time sensor data to adapt to changing weather conditions.

"At AWS, we are also working closely with customers to help them meet their own sustainability goals using cloud technology and driving innovation in low carbon solutions," said Ken Haig, Head of Energy Policy, Asia Pacific and Japan, AWS.

AWS was the leading cloud service provider in the second quarter, accounting for 31 per cent of total spend after growing 37 per cent on an annual basis, a new report by market research firm Canalys has showed.

On electric mobility, Amazon India has also committed to include 10,000 electric vehicles in its delivery fleet by 2025, an integral milestone on the decarbonisation journey.