China: Alibaba Cloud's 2030 vision

Alibaba Cloud, a subsidiary of Alibaba, has announced that it is on track to have its global data centers running entirely on clean, renewable energy by 2030. As part of its green pledge and push towards more sustainable operations, the company has announced that it is upgrading five of its hyper-scale data centers in China. These new facilities will employ what the company calls “cutting-edge green technologies," including liquid cooling and renewable electricity storage.

Alibaba first made its green pledge in December 2021, outlining that it would make its operations carbon-neutral by 2030 and, further to this, reduce 1.5 gigatons of greenhouse gas emissions across the business by 2035.

Commenting on this, Shanyuan Gao, General Manager of Alibaba Cloud Infrastructure’s Internet Data Center Division, said that eco-friendly data centers are “critical” to Alibaba’s sustainable operations. Adding: “Liquid cooling will be promoted throughout China and in more countries in the future. In our Hangzhou data center, server clusters are submerged in specialized liquid coolant, which quickly chills the IT hardware. We are looking at carbon management tools to help us better take advantage of energy trading schemes while also planning a more stable energy supply.”