Cloud Migration can Cut Carbon Emissions by 80 Percent for Indian Organizations

Indian companies and public sector organizations that have migrated computing workloads from on-premises data centres to cloud infrastructure could expect to reduce their energy use and associated carbon footprint by nearly 80 percent, according to a new report.

Amazon Web Services announced findings of the Carbon Reduction Opportunity of Moving to the Cloud for APAC report by 451 Research, a unit of S&P Global Market Intelligence.

The report found organizations that have moved certain workloads to the cloud can reduce their carbon footprint significantly. 451 Research estimated that if 25 percent 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 1,60,000 Indian households.

“Cloud technology can credibly help companies in India to decarbonize,” said Puneet Chandok, President Commercial Business – AWS India and South Asia, AISPL.

“With India’s vibrant start-up ecosystem already pioneering low carbon solutions, it is imperative that enterprises, public sector organizations, and policymakers factor in sustainability as a critical part of their cloud migration decisions. AWS’s commitment to fulfilling our net carbon neutrality goals in India includes initiatives in infrastructure efficiency, renewable energy, water sustainability, electric mobility, sustainable packaging, and building awareness through community engagement,” said Chandok.

“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, Data center Infrastructure & Services at 451 Research of S&P Global Market Intelligence.

“In our study, the server-level efficiencies of Indian organizations exceeded their peers in other surveyed APAC countries as a result of higher rates of virtualization and a more aggressive stance towards workload consolidation. Indian organizations drive their systems somewhat harder, and their server infrastructure is among the youngest on average in APAC. However, much of this is offset by inefficiencies at the facility level. Cloud providers like AWS are driven to make all parts of their infrastructure work in sync to increase efficiency, from design to operations, to lower costs and provide IT services at scale. Furthermore, the lack of accessible and affordable corporate renewable energy options leaves a significant amount of carbon reduction potential on the table,” added Morgan.

According to the report, the energy efficiency gains of cloud data centers were based on their use of the latest, most energy-efficient servers, which typically run at higher utilization rates than on-premises data centers. These two factors combined led cloud data centers to use 67.4 percent less energy.

APAC enterprises utilized under 15 percent of servers on average. Cloud operators utilize servers well above 50 percent. The research further found that facility-level energy efficiency gains at cloud data centers, including the use of advanced power distribution systems and cooling technology, provided an additional 11.4 percent of energy savings.

“Cloud data centers perform the same workloads with five times more energy efficiency than APAC enterprises and public sector organizations,” the report said.

Amazon further highlighted its own sustainability efforts in the country and said that AWS server systems were designed for power optimization and use the latest component technology.

On electric mobility, Amazon India has committed to include 10,000 electric vehicles in its delivery fleet by 2025, it said. It has also introduced several sustainable packaging efforts over the last year including India-first initiatives like Packaging-Free Shipping (PFS) and the elimination of 100 per cent single-use plastic in packaging from fulfillment centers.

It is also planning to further implement ultra-low flow water fixtures for all buildings to reduce water consumption.

451 Research surveyed more than 500 private and public sector organizations across Asia Pacific (APAC), spanning a variety of industries across Australia, India, Japan, Singapore, and South Korea. The report, commissioned by AWS, includes over 100 survey respondents in India.