Explore 2023 Report

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The cloud

AWS is the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud offering, with millions of global users depending on it every day. To build a sustainable business for our customers and for the world we all share, we’re designing data centers that provide the efficient, resilient service our customers expect while minimizing our environmental footprint—and theirs.

Progress

4.1x AWS infrastructure is up to 4.1 times more energy efficient than on-premises and can reduce workloads’ carbon footprint by up to 99%

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7B+ liters of water will be returned each year to local communities through AWS’s water replenishment efforts

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100% of electricity consumed by Amazon was matched with renewable energy sources in 2023

Our approach

Our sustainability work includes enhancing energy efficiency, transitioning to carbon-free energy, reducing embodied carbon, using water responsibly, driving a circular economy, and enabling sustainability for customers.

Increasing efficiency

We focus on efficiency across all aspects of our infrastructure, from the design of our data centers and hardware, to modeling the performance of our operations for continually enhanced efficiency. By continually improving our efficiency, we can reduce the amount of energy needed to operate our data centers.
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Efficiency of scale

Our scale allows us to achieve higher resource utilization and energy efficiency than the typical on-premises data center. A study released by Accenture and AWS estimates running optimized workloads on AWS’s infrastructure is up to 4.1 times more efficient than on-premises and can reduce workloads’ carbon footprint by up to 99%.
Download How Moving onto The AWS Cloud Reduces Carbon Emissions

Predicting performance


We use advanced modeling methods, such as computational fluid dynamics tools, to optimize our data center design. This allows us to understand how a data center will perform before it’s built, enabling us to optimize for higher reliability and energy efficiency in our systems. Once our data centers are operational, real-time, physics-based models allow us to further improve and optimize our designs. We build these custom models using AWS services and weather datasets from the Amazon Sustainability Data Initiative to predict system performance for our sites and track their performance against how they should be operating.

Cooling efficiency

Cooling is one of the largest sources of energy usage in our data centers and we’re continually innovating in cooling efficiency. We use different cooling techniques depending on the time of year and use real-time sensor data to adapt to changing weather conditions. We’re also working to optimize the longevity and airflow performance of the cooling equipment used in our data center cooling systems.

Power efficiency

One of the most visible ways we’re using innovation to improve power efficiency is our investment in AWS chips.
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Power efficiency

One of the most visible ways we’re using innovation to improve power efficiency is our investment in AWS chips.

Graviton4

This is the latest generation of chips designed by AWS and the most powerful and energy-efficient chip AWS has built as of 2023. Graviton4 provides up to 30% better computing performance, 50% more cores, and 75% more memory bandwidth than Graviton3 processors while using the same amount of energy.

Inferentia2

In 2023, AWS launched Inferentia2, the second generation of its Inferentia chip, developed to deliver the highest performance at the lowest cost per watt. Inferentia2 is up to 50% more energy-efficient and can reduce costs by up to 40% against comparable Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud instances.

See how Amazon Web Services is enabling sustainability solutions.

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Carbon-free energy

We're proud that in 2023, we've achieved our goal to match 100% of the electricity consumed across our operations with renewable energy —a commitment we've met seven years ahead of our original 2030 goal.
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We procure renewable power from utility-scale wind and solar projects that add new sources of carbon-free energy to the grid. These new renewable energy projects support hundreds of jobs while providing hundreds of millions of dollars of investment in local communities. We may support these grids through the purchase of environmental attributes, like Renewable Energy Certificates and Guarantees of Origin, in line with our Renewable Energy Methodology.

 

Amazon’s energy supply from utilities, combined with the renewable energy we procure across the U.S., means that 100% of the electricity consumed by 22 AWS data center regions is matched by renewable energy sources.

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Reducing embodied carbon

We’re focused on reducing the indirect emissions associated with building AWS data centers and the manufacturing of our hardware.

Lower-carbon concrete and steel

We’re working to reduce the embodied carbon of materials like concrete and steel, which are used to build our data centers. Embodied carbon is emitted during the extraction, manufacturing, and transportation of materials to construction sites. In 2023, AWS built 36 data centers with lower-carbon concrete and 31 data centers with lower-carbon steel.
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AWS hardware

We’re also focused on reducing embodied emissions associated with the manufacturing of AWS hardware, including silicon-based devices like processors and solid-state drives. As these emissions are primarily from material extraction and product manufacturing, the path to decarbonizing chip production involves all parts of the lifecycle. To address this, we’re working with suppliers to improve their energy efficiency.
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More sustainable fuels

In 2023, AWS started transitioning to hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) to power backup generators at its data center sites in Europe and the U.S., with sites in Ireland, Sweden, and Oregon among the first to make the switch. HVO is a type of renewable diesel made from waste cooking oil or vegetable, plant, and residue oils. HVO can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 90% over the fuel’s lifecycle when compared with fossil fuel-based diesel.
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Prioritizing a circular economy

AWS embraces circular economy principles for its server racks by designing reusable and lower-carbon rack systems from the outset. In addition, AWS works to keep equipment operating efficiently and to recover value from securely decommissioned equipment through reuse, repair, and recycling. By working to maximize resource value for as long as possible, AWS reduces waste generation from its global operations, decreases the use of raw materials, and reduces carbon emissions across its supply chain.

Design better

We concentrate on avoiding excess material such as steel or plastic, increasing recycled and bio-based content, and planning for repair, reuse, and recycling from the beginning.        

Operate longer

When AWS uses equipment for as long as operationally efficient, it reduces the carbon footprint associated with manufacturing and using new hardware and avoids unnecessary waste.

Recover more

AWS sends retired infrastructure hardware from around the world to its regional reverse logistics hubs. These hubs help AWS consolidate, assess, repair, and recirculate functional equipment back into its inventory or to third parties to be sold for reuse.

Committed to being water positive

At Amazon, we know that water is a precious resource. AWS is committed to being water positive by 2030 and making more water available to the communities where we operate.
Explore water stewardship

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