Report finds that APAC organisations could cut emissions by 78% by moving to cloud

There is an increasing awareness around the need to slash carbon emissions in the industry and push towards more sustainability. Yet, according to a recent UN report, around only 40% of the enterprises who have made sustainability commitments believe their targets are ambitious enough to meet UN’s Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. That’s where cloud infrastructure could help.

A study conducted by 451 Research, and Amazon Web Services (AWS), has found that companies in the Asia Pacific Region (APAC) could significantly reduce their carbon footprint by stepping away from on-premises data centers and going cloud-based. The report outlines that cloud-based data centers could reportedly cut emissions by up to 78%.

The 415 Research report surveyed 515 organizations with annual revenues of $10 million to $1 billion across Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Australia, and India, to analyze energy usage and efficiency. It found that hyperscale cloud data centers are able to perform the same workloads at nearly five times the energy efficiency.

Specifically, the report found that Singapore could see an average workload energy reduction of 76%, that’s 1,542 metric tonnes of carbon per megawatt of datacentre capacity per year. This is particularly interesting considering Singapore currently has the most efficient on-premise data centers in the region.

Meanwhile, the study showed that India and Australia would potentially see the biggest benefits from going cloud-based regarding carbon emission reductions. Australia would benefit from a carbon reduction of 3,149 metric tons of CO2e per megawatt of datacentre capacity, and India would see a carbon reduction of 3,449 metric tons per year on average.

Speaking at the regional briefing meeting, Kelly Morgan, research director for datacentre infrastructure and managed services at 451 Research, said: “Hyperscale cloud providers have a real incentive to make all of the components in their datacentres work together to be as efficient as possible.” She added: “They tend to get the latest generation of servers, often designed specifically for their purposes – the servers are up to 50% more utilized, and the datacentres themselves are more efficient.”

Findings from the report even revealed that if all cloud operations in APAC used 100% renewable energy for power, carbon and energy reductions would be as high as 90%. That said, the report outlines that currently in APAC, there is a lack of accessible and affordable renewable

energy options.