Cloud big three sign open letter urging datacentre kit suppliers to step up

Embodied carbon emissions are the focus

AWS, Microsoft and Google have jointly called on third-party datacentre construction and equipment providers to help them calculate indirect cloud emissions

The three hyperscalers, along with Meta, Digital Realty and Schneider Electric, have put their names to an open letter from members of the iMason Climate Accord, which is a coalition of tech firms focused on making digital infrastructure more environmentally friendly.

The letter states that the "digital infrastructure industry is increasingly recognising its responsibility to mitigate climate change by lowering its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions".

Computing has written at length on the various contributing to the GHG emissions of the giant datacentres which constitute the public cloud. There is a much greater awareness now of the vast amounts of electricity needed for cooling and powering infrastructure.

Rather less focus has been placed on embodied emissions incurred during construction – a subject Computing researched last year. However, the letter puts the subject of embodied emissions front and centre.

These emissions are very difficult to quantify, because the party doing so is reliant on third parties to supply them with accurate scope 3 emissions data. For hyperscalers this takes the form of data on the materials used to build and equip their datacentres, and this typically appears in a Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) document. You can read an article explaining these in greater detail here.

"One can view the EPD as a ‘nutrition' label of a material," the letter says. "EPDs are then used to estimate the embodied carbon footprint of a project, in this case a datacentre, based on the actual volume of material or counts of products purchased."

The challenge facing signatories to the letter is that too few third-party manufacturers produce EPDs, making it difficult for operators to get an accurate understanding of the emissions embodied in their datacentres.

What they want is for their suppliers to "publish more EPDs for materials and equipment used to construct and operate" datacentres, because they need this embodied emissions data to "meet regulators' and customer needs".

The letter concluded: "By taking these actions, our supply chain vendors will improve the transparency of digital infrastructure embodied emissions, support our GHG estimation and reporting, and help ensure we are positioned to meet our climate goals via more informed green procurement as we develop the digital infrastructure of the future."

Cloud customers are pushing for better scope 3 footprint tools

Computing has yet to scrutinise the sustainability reports for 2023 which have all recently been published. Our research for FY22 can be seen here. However, both Microsoft and Google have reported a rise in scope 3 emissions for FY23, and they both attribute this rise to adding to their datacentre capacity.

AWS reports a reduction in scope 3 emissions, partly due to the use of lower emissions building materials in datacentre construction, something it's been quietly cracking on with for several years now. Amazon's reticence about its work in this area has frustrated advocates for more sustainable cloud computing because its role in pioneering and derisking the use of these materials could help to bring down cloud emissions across the sector.

Amazon has also been criticised for not including scope 3 emissions data within the range of its Customer Carbon Footprint Tool. Critics have pointed out that the absence of the data category which typically constitutes around 80% of overall emissions severely limits its use as a tool for calculating carbon footprint.

Speaking to Computing in April this year, Chris Walker, Director of Sustainability at AWS acknowledged that AWS had some catching up to do in this space.

"We've been digging into how we get deeper, as AWS, into the LCA [life cycle assessment] space. What are the categories that we can start prioritising and pulling together from a science and a methodology standpoint? I think, in the coming months, we'll have a little bit more to share in terms of what that roadmap looks like. It's one of the areas that I think was generally under resourced, we haven't put the right investment into it."

However, because customers have been getting noisier about wanting more scope 3 data, that is changing.

"Now, especially with scope 3, we've heard it loud and clear and we're starting to peel back the onion layers. Our scope 3 starts going down the supply chain space, and trying to get our suppliers, whether semiconductor or otherwise, to start thinking about their own plans. That's even harder to pull into the thought process. We're looking at what we can immediately control how do we further influence others that are falling within our scope 3 too."

In a statement shared as part of the announcement about the open letter's publication, AWS restated its commitment to working with partners across the cloud industry to support the fight against climate change.

"At AWS we are committed to reaching net-zero carbon emissions across our operations by 2040 by investing in carbon-free energy, scaling solutions and collaborating with partners to broaden our impact," said Eric Wilcox, vice president of datacentre engineering at AWS.

"We support the iMasons call for suppliers to adopt the use of Environmental Product Declarations… [and] doing so will provide greater transparency in scope 3 emissions embodied in equipment and help accelerate the overall industry's efforts to reduce its carbon footprint."