Unleashing the Power of the Cloud with the AWS Cloud Value Framework (CVF) – Sustainability (6/7)

Pillar 5: Sustainability

Introduction

This blog forms part of a series on the AWS Cloud Value Framework (CVF). The CVF serves as a comprehensive guide to help businesses to evaluate, quantify, and communicate the value of AWS Cloud adoption. It comprises five pillars:

Figure 1: The AWS Cloud Value Framework

In this blog, we will explain:

• The Sustainability pillar
• The benefits that organizations have been able to achieve with AWS
• How organizations were able to use AWS to achieve these benefits
• Examples and case studies
• How to demonstrate the value for your own migration

Pillar 5: Sustainability

Sustainability is the fifth value pillar in the CVF and this measures the environmental benefit for enterprises moving to public cloud infrastructure.

When considering sustainability and the cloud, there are three categories:

1. Sustainability of the Cloud – AWS is responsible for optimizing the sustainability of the cloud. Cloud providers achieve a lower carbon footprint by investing in efficient power and cooling technology, operating energy efficient server populations, and achieving high server utilization rates. Cloud workloads reduce impact by taking advantage of shared resources, such as networking, power, cooling, and physical facilities. Using AWS, WeTransfer have been able 78% reduction in the emissions from server use in 2022.
   

   Figure 2: The shared responsibility model for sustainability

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   Figure 3: Dr. Werner Vogels, AWS re:Invent 2023

   Sustainability in the cloud – Customers are responsible for optimizing workloads and resource utilization, and minimizing the total resources required to be deployed for your workloads. This optimization is achieved across different options. Some of these options include the initial selection of an efficient programming language, adoption of modern algorithms, and use of efficient data storage techniques. In addition, deploying to correctly sized and efficient compute infrastructure, turning off unrequired resources, and minimizing requirements for high-powered end user hardware will also help optimize workloads. For example, customers can choose to use AWS Graviton instances that use up to 60% less energy than comparable EC2 instances for the same performance. Dr. Werner Vogels at AWS re:Invent 2023 highlighted that “Cost is a close proxy for sustainability.” Sustainability actions on AWS Cloud will have the additional benefit of reducing your cost.

3. Sustainability through the Cloud – Organizations use the AWS Cloud to run workloads designed to support your wider sustainability challenges. For example, Qantas cut fuel costs significantly with a cloud flight analytics solution called Constellation. It plots optimal flight plans that avoid headwinds in favor of time-saving tailwinds to go from origin to destination. Constellation is helping Qantas plan routes and save fuel, while helping improve its sustainability posture. Rob James, former Chief Technology Officer at Qantas stated: “That’s going to save us $40 million in costs each year by a 1–2 percent improvement on these flight plans. . We’re going to reduce our carbon emissions because of that system by around 50 million kilograms each year.”

Sustainability of the cloud is typically what organizations use when assessing a migration from on-premises data centers to the cloud. To help organizations understand this benefit, AWS commissioned Accenture to study the sustainability metrics of on-premises versus AWS deployments. The study shows that moving workloads to AWS can help enterprises steeply reduce energy consumption and their carbon footprint compared to their internal operations.

Figure 4: Reducing your carbon footprint by migrating from on-premises, AWS

For the reference workloads, the results show that running workloads on AWS is up to 4.1 times more energy-efficient than on-premises. This can reduce the associated carbon footprint by up to 99% when optimized.

To achieve the results identified by Accenture, the AWS approach focuses on:

• Increasing Efficiency across all aspects of our infrastructure. This is done from the design of our data centers and hardware, to modeling the performance of our operations for nearly continuous enhanced efficiency. By continuously improving our efficiency, we can reduce the amount of energy needed to operate our data centers.
• Renewable Energy – We’re on a path to power our operations with 100% renewable energy by 2025. This is part of our commitment to reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2040. In 2022, 90% of the electricity consumed by Amazon was attributable to renewable energy sources. Our renewable energy investments help power our data centers around the world.
• Reducing Embodied Carbon – We’re reducing the indirect emissions associated with building AWS data centers and the manufacturing of our hardware.
• Keeping Technologies in Use Longer – We’re reducing emissions related to server use and networking equipment by increasing the lifespan of servers. This includes refining our software to run more efficiently, which lowers stress on hardware and extends its useful life. To support these efforts, AWS has a robust maintenance and repair program. It is designed to increase component reuse, and further reduce carbon emissions and waste across our supply chain.

Demonstrating Business Value of Sustainability

The sustainability benefit of the cloud can be estimated to show your carbon footprint reduction. Using details of your existing environment:

• Number of servers, network switches, storage devices
• Power per appliance / device
• Power Unit Effectiveness (PUE) of your Data Center

Using the benchmarks from Accenture it is possible to estimate the reduction and benefit you’ll achieve through a cloud migration.

Once migrated to the cloud, organizations are able to further reduce their carbon footprint with sustainability in the cloud. Sustainability is built into AWS’s Well-Architected Framework Review. We encourage customers to use this process to identify opportunities to improve the sustainability of their AWS environment. Through sustainability in the cloud, Zendesk was able to optimize their AWS environment to reduce cost, improve performance, and reduce their carbon footprint. Kmart Australia was able to reduce their carbon footprint by an estimated 72% by removing 136 physical servers.

AWS customers can see the business value through the AWS Customer Carbon Footprint Tool. The AWS Customer Carbon Footprint Tool helps you to track, measure, review, and forecast the carbon emissions generated from your AWS usage. It provides visualizations that:

• Show historical carbon emissions from their AWS usage (based on Scope 1 and 2), facilitating external reporting on these emissions
• Help you to analyze the changes in your emissions over time as you migrate workloads to AWS, re-architect applications, or remove unused resources

Figure 5: Carbon reduction estimates for cloud migration

Forecast how your emissions will change across your sustainability journey as Amazon progresses toward powering operations with 100% renewable energy. Organizations are able to achieve business value, as AWS helps companies reduce their carbon footprint by using cloud services, which can lead to energy efficiency, waste reduction, and overall environmental impact mitigation. AWS offers renewable energy options, energy-efficient infrastructure, and tools for measuring and optimizing resource usage. This helps businesses to align with sustainability goals while also saving costs and improving operational efficiency.

Additional Support

For additional support and guidance in demonstrating the Business Value, refer to the Cloud Economics Center. Contact your AWS account representative to request a complimentary Cloud Economics assessment.