SUSTAINABILITY
Renewable energy, water and embodied carbon Renewable energy is a second major pillar of AWS’ s carbon strategy. Amazon reports that since 2023 it has matched 100 % of the electricity consumed by its global operations, including AWS, with renewable energy purchases – maintaining its position as the world’ s largest corporate buyer of renewables for several years running.
That procurement scale helps lower the carbon intensity of each kilowatt‐hour used in AWS data centres, though campaign groups and analysts continue to challenge the quality and additionality of some projects and certificates.
Beyond electricity, AWS is increasingly linking its carbon footprint to water and materials. Data centre cooling is a major focus, with AWS committing to becoming water positive by 2030, meaning it will return more water to communities than it uses in its direct operations.
By the end of 2024, AWS said it had reached 53 % of the way towards this goal, up from 41 % in 2023, aided by expanding recycled‐water cooling to more locations and cutting water use significantly versus conventional systems in some deployments. This, in turn, reduces the indirect emissions associated with water treatment and movement while addressing growing local scrutiny of data centre water use.
Embodied carbon in construction materials is also moving up the agenda. AWS says its global data
centre programme is increasingly using lower‐carbon concrete and reducing steel volumes in new builds, embedding these specifications into standard design rather than treating them as one‐off interventions.
Customer carbon tools and transparency On the customer side, AWS has invested in tooling to make cloud‐related emissions more visible and actionable.
84 March 2026