Eco-Warriors: Amazon AWS vs Google Cloud Platform - who is going for green?
Two of the world’s leading cloud providers battle it out for the climate crown
From an IT standpoint the cloud is one of the world's largest resource hogs, sucking in power, land and water to store all that important (and not-so-important) data. But you might not know that if you only listened to cloud vendors: they all make big claims and are all, to some extent, guilty of artificially inflating their climate credentials.
In this article, we'll examine two of the world's biggest cloud vendors: scale front-runner Amazon Web Services (AWS), and third-place Google Cloud Platform (GCP). But as we'll see, size isn't everything.
See also: Eco-warriors: Microsoft Azure versus Google Cloud Platform on sustainability
Methodology
We built our Sustainability Report on the foundation of the Sustainability Matrix: a set of 27 individual sustainability markers grouped into four categories. These are: Standards and Policies; Emissions/Energy/Water; Waste/Circular Economy/Recycling; and Transparency.
Each vendor we covered was assessed against the Sustainability Matrix criteria based on that vendor's own data - drawn from Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) reporting, direct interviews with individuals at those organisations, and more general data available publicly, such as press releases. Each criterion has its own individual weighting in terms of its importance to sustainability, and each vendor is awarded a rating for the sustainability of its cloud services. The maximum score available was 60 points. All data was taken from reporting for year 2020/2021.
Amazon AWS versus Google Cloud Platform: The background
Amazon AWS and Google Cloud Platform are two of the world's biggest cloud platforms: Amazon has about a third of the market share by itself, while Google controls about 10% worldwide.
However, despite its massive scale there is one thing that Amazon is dragging its feet on, and that its ESG actions. The company talks a good game, making multiple investments and launching The Climate Pledge; but it doesn't even break AWS out as a separate unit when reporting carbon emissions, and shares little climate data on a company-wide level. These failures of transparency hold it back from top marks in our ranking.
Google is also not the highest-scoring company in our ranking, but does hold a place in the top three. It has a relatively small gap between two categories that play closely together: Standards & Policies and the far more data-driven Energy/Emissions/Water, indicating that it is doing well at turning its plans into reality.
The exclusion of numerous Scope 3 emissions categories from Google's offsetting programme does let the company down; but on the other hand, it recently announced an expanded portfolio of datasets and tools aimed at helping governments, industry and individuals to make more sustainable decisions. Google's willingness to share its greatest asset - its data - is commendable, and echoes similar moves by Microsoft.
Amazon AWS versus Google Cloud Platform: At a glance
- Standards and Policies: Our researchers consider both companies' ambitions too small in scope for their size. Amazon scored just half the maximum points and Google performed only slightly better, with 12 out of 20.
- Emissions/Energy/Water: Google was the only vendor in our analysis to score more highly in this very tangible category than in Standards & Policies, which speaks well for its climate action. Amazon, on the other hand, has good targets but does not share enough data to know if it can back them up.
- Waste/Circular Economy/Recycling: No company performed well here, but Google still quadrupled Amazon's disappointing single point.
- Transparency: Google only scores six out of a possible 10 points, mainly due to poor water and waste data and a certain haziness in Scope 3 reporting. That is still significantly ahead of Amazon, which does provide data but with little clarity, context or accessibility.
Amazon AWS versus Google Cloud Platform: Standards
Standards and Policies criteria exist to provide clarity about the standards vendors have signed up to.
Amazon took full marks for board-level representation (Kara Hurst, Worldwide VP Sustainability), and also performed well in its engagement with customers and suppliers. It launched The Climate Pledge in 2020, which shows good uptake, and in December 2021 announced that it would provide customers with the carbon footprint of their use of AWS services.
Overall, however, the world's largest cloud provider sits in the bottom third of our ranking, and the problems start with standards. All of the publicity and marketing around its co-founding of The Climate Pledge spoke earnestly of the need to accelerate the pace of change to net zero, but the reality is that its target of 2040, whilst a decade ahead of The Paris Agreement, compares poorly with several cloud rivals who have a much faster timeline - and in one case (Microsoft) a pledge to remove all historic emissions, as well.
Then we come to Amazon's membership of SBTi; two years after joining, it is still at the initial ‘Commit' stage - there are four further phases. The company is not ISO14001 certified, and while it displays the UN Sustainable Development Goals logo on its website, there is minimal detail about what it is doing to effect change.
We also consider Amazon's climate targets too small in scale, considering the company's size and power. For example, its 2021 goal to ‘collect environmental performance data from 200 suppliers by the end of the year', while admirable, contained no actual call to action for those suppliers. If Amazon were to really lean on its supply chain using its market power, it could effect real change.
Like Amazon, Google falls down on a few key Standards areas, specifically when it comes to signing up to third party targets. Instead of opting for ISO14001 it has instead chosen to follow ISO5001, for example: a certification focusing specifically on energy use, rather than wider environmental management. Similarly, whilst Google supports the UN Sustainable Development Goals it doesn't specifically align itself to any of them or report on progress against them.
Google does have board level representation in Chief Sustainability Officer Kate Brandt, and also does well in its ecosystem engagement. Customers can easily track the emissions associated with their Google services using the free Carbon Footprint tool, which now tracks Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions (previously it was only Scope 2).
Google also offers its customers Google Cloud Region Picker, which helps customers assess carbon footprint among other inputs, as they choose which Google Cloud region to run on. The company is also widening access to Google Earth Engine so enterprise and governments can access Google's data and AI heft to understand trends and correlations between human activities and environmental impact.
Amazon AWS versus Google Cloud Platform: Energy
Emissions/Energy/Water covers the sustainability of data centres and office buildings.
Amazon's emissions have risen alongside its massive growth, with both Scope 1 and Scope 3 rising (67% and 15% respectively) between 2018 and 2020, and Scope 2 only falling 4%. Overall, absolute emissions rose 19 per cent year-on-year to 60.1 million MTCO2e. Amazon instead prefers to talk about Carbon Intensity (emissions compared to revenue), which fell 16% over the same period - but this reflects Amazon's revenue growth, rather than emissions reduction.
It is in renewable energy generation where Amazon shines. The company is the largest corporate buyer of renewable energy on the planet, planning to power 100% of its operations with renewables by 2025. This was confirmed at 65% as of 2020, the most recent data currently available, although Amazon appears to be claiming 85% now. This may well be true, but as with many of Amazon's claims there is no way of knowing - the company still doesn't break down its totals into self generated/grid mix/contractual instruments.
Although it does not quantify how much energy is self-generated, Amazon has announced more than 270 wind and solar projects globally. Again, treat this figure with caution: 'announced' is the key word, and these projects take years to start producing. In fact, a footnote in Amazon's Renewable Energy Methodology document states that 'As of June 2021 Amazon has enabled over 10,000 MW of new renewable energy capacity through wind and solar projects. These projects have a lead time of 2-3 years of contracting to operating (producing renewable energy)' (emphasis ours).
So, Amazon may well be claiming the output of some of the renewable projects it has enabled up front to get to the 85% figure, or have used some other method. The point is - we can't check.
Google is almost halfway to its NetZero by 2030 target. While both location and market-based Scope 2 emissions increased from 2019 to 2020, Scope 3 fell by more than enough to compensate for that increase.
Google also provides good, clear data on its use of renewable energy. It purchases 100% of its electricity from renewable sources, and breaks the data into 'grid' and 'PPAs and onsite'. We can use this to see how much energy Google generates from its own renewable sources and how much it purchases via contacts with suppliers and general grid mix. PPAs are a type of direct contract for renewable energy that is preferable to offsetting via other types of Renewable Energy Certificate (REC).
Google publishes a 'Carbon free energy [CFE] across Google data centres hourly' percentage, which was 66% in 2021: an increase from 61% in 2019, though 1% lower than 2020. Google says, 'We expected this kind of short-term fluctuation: building new clean energy is a multi-year process, and our near-term priority is to build strong foundations for long-term CFE growth.'
Google has purchased 100% of its electricity from renewable sources since 2017.
When it comes to their respective facilities, neither company has LEED certifications for their data centres (that we could see). However, Google slightly pips Amazon here because it has more office space certified: 17 million ft² worldwide, of which 58% is Gold certified and 27% is Platinum. Amazon only certifies its headquarters and large US offices (an undefined mix of Gold and Platinum ratings).
In terms of data centres, Google's average PUE comes in at 1.1 - nearly perfect. Amazon's, however, is more difficult to quantify.
Amazon provides comparatively little information about its data centres: it claims to use evaporative cooling, but outside of a few individual examples we do not know anything about the energy and water impact of cooling AWS facilities globally.
Amazon's own studies claim high levels of efficiency but are heavily greenwashed, omitting some key information. For example, they only deal with enterprise data centres, not hyperscale ones belonging to other cloud providers. Naturally, Amazon is favoured here: the size of AWS datacentres enables higher resource utilisation and energy efficiency than an individual enterprise datacentre could manage on its own.
As our report's authors say, ‘The claims about greater efficiency of AWS datacentres are made without once providing comparative PUE. This begs the question: if the global average AWS datacentre PUE is so efficient, why not publish the data?'
Both companies scored badly on water use efficiency. Once again, Amazon makes claims without providing data to back them up. Google does provide data, but it is not encouraging: the amount of water the company uses rose from 2.5 billion gallons in 2016 to 5.7 billion gallons in 2020. This sits at odds with the commitment to replenish 120% of the water it uses by 2030.
Amazon AWS versus Google Cloud Platform: Waste
Waste/Circular Economy/Recycling is all about the extent to which cloud vendors are squeezing various categories of waste out of their value chain.
Neither Amazon or Google performed especially well in this area: Amazon notably provides no data on any of the categories we assessed. It squeaked out a single point for ongoing work to replace paper & plastic envelopes, which can't be recycled, with paper-padded mailers. It is also increasing the content of recycled plastic in plastic film bags. Together, these improvements are expected to eliminate more than 25,000 tonnes of new plastic each year.
Google has managed to cuts its overall waste generation since 2018, especially in 2020 when construction projects were halted due to the pandemic, so it picked up one point here. The company doesn't break out e-waste as a separate category in the main report, but a spokesperson for Google told Computing that in 2020, 23% of components used for server upgrades were refurbished inventory. During the same year, Google wiped clean and resold 8.2 million components into the secondary market for reuse by other organisations.
Google also gained full marks for breaking the landfill diversion data into offices (71%) and data centres (81%), but provides no data on single use plastic other than to share goals such as 'eliminate plastic from packaging and make 100% recyclable by 2025.' It states that this and similar goals are 'in progress.' If it had shared how much progress had been made, the company would have secured more points.
Amazon AWS versus Google Cloud Platform: Transparency
Our final category, Transparency, deals with the extent to which the vendors make their environmental data available.
Amazon took just a third of the available points in this category. Even where climate data is available, the company does not make it easily readable, burying it in appendices and often providing only top line numbers, with little context or insight into the calculations used to reach them.
Google was, at least, in the upper half of marks for this category, picking up a spread of points across the board. The company was notable for its efforts in carbon accounting, carbon offsets and target-based GHG reporting. However, lest we forget, carbon is not the only greenhouse gas (GHG) we must worry about.
What lets Google down, in addition to poor data on waste and water, is the opacity of its Scope 3 totals. The company breaks out the Scope 3 categories of employee commuting and business travel for its target of operational carbon neutrality, so these are the only Scope 3 emissions it offsets. However, Google's Climate Disclosure Project data makes clear that there are two other huge sources of Scope 3 emissions - 'Capital' and 'Other (upstream)'. 'Other' accounted for 7 million MTCO2e and it is not clear from the ESG report whether this is being offset.
Google is also fond of graphics indicating progress against target. This is useful to some extent but a percentage figure of progress against target would be more so.
Conclusions
Amazon remains the world leader in terms of the scale of its enterprise cloud platform; but Google is steps ahead on sustainability. That said, the company is not perfect and has some key areas it could stand to improve.
Amazon's key weakness is on data, taking just three points out of a possible 10 in Transparency. The company is making all the right noises, but the reality of its actions and willingness to speak openly about them does not match up.
The problem starts with standards. For all the publicity and marketing around the need to move fast towards net zero, Amazon's 2040 target is as much as a decade behind some rivals. The data that is available has a healthy gloss of greenwash applied, presenting a somewhat skewed image of the firm.
It is also difficult to compare Amazon to other cloud vendors in terms of emissions because it doesn't distinguish between AWS and the rest of its operations. This makes Amazon by far the biggest emitter in our survey - and with this comes responsibility for setting the highest possible green standards. At present, however, it does not look as if the scale of Amazon's ambition matches what is necessary.
In fairness, Amazon has made some serious sustainability investments recently, particularly in renewables, and acknowledges that it will be ‘several years' for the effect to be fully reflected in its carbon footprint. It is possible that emissions will fall rapidly when these investments come online - but, in the short term, the company must do more to compensate until it reaches that point.
In comparison, the scale of Google's ambition and actions are much higher. Google is on the whole putting its money - its data - where its mouth is. Its carbon accounting is reasonably transparent and it provides considerable and welcome detail on the type and quality of carbon offsetting. This matters because carbon offsetting is a notoriously murky practice, but Google gives every impression of being up-front about its use of carbon markets. At present, the exclusion of so many Scope 3 emissions calls into question Google's 'Carbon neutral on operations' claim.
Having said that, Google has clearly worked to make tools available to its customers and demonstrate an understanding and willingness to share data for the common good. It is also one of the few in this analysis to try and begin to quantify the carbon impact of remote working, which is only going to become more important as hybrid working beds in.
If Google could polish its Scope 3 reporting and offset these emissions, it could find a place towards the top of our rankings - maybe even on par with Microsoft.
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