Dive deep into sustainability with the re:Invent sustainability attendee guide

Here at Amazon and Amazon Web Services (AWS), we believe that we play a critical role in addressing climate change. That is why Amazon co-founded The Climate Pledge — a pledge to reach net-zero carbon emissions across our operations by 2040, 10 years ahead of the Paris Agreement. It’s also why we’re on a path to powering our operations with 100% renewable energy by 2025—five years ahead of our original target of 2030.

Building on this theme, this year’s re:Invent includes many sustainability topics. To guide you across breakout sessions and activities, check out the re:Invent sustainability attendee guide. We’re looking forward to sharing this content to inspire teams, to learn from each other, to get hands-on, and to see what’s possible when we combine technology with sustainability.

Dive deep with sustainability technology experts in breakout sessions

Many sustainability journeys start with data-driven insights to measure, monitor, and ultimately manage change to meet sustainability commitments. Several of the sustainability sessions will introduce and discuss data sources that can be used to analyze and predict trends. Check out Methods for analyzing climate and weather data (WPS202) focusing on the AWS Open Data Sponsorship Program, which hosts an increasing amount of weather and climate data from national hydrometeorological agencies that can be accessed by anyone at no cost. Learn how data analysis can help you solve practical problems, like temperature levels, if your building will flood more frequently over the next 100 years, or how much solar power you will generate in the next hour.

Discover how data collected across continents can be used to help communities impacted by climate change in Addressing climate change from space (session WPS204). In this session, learn how Digital Earth Africa is using AWS to turn continental-scale satellite imagery data of Africa into ready-to-use insights about the continent’s environmental conditions to address social, environmental, and economic changes as they develop an ecosystem for innovation across sectors. Join this session for a demo of the Digital Earth Africa platform and how it uses Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS), AWS Lambda, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), and Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) in its solution architecture to empower African governments, NGOs, businesses, and communities as they address existential challenges like climate change.

If you are ready to work hands-on with sustainability or environmental, social, and governance (ESG) data, sign up for the Code Green! The sustainability data hackathon and workshop (HJS304), an all-day coding event for builders to solve a sustainability-related technical challenge. Entries use sustainability data available in the Amazon Sustainability Data Initiative (ASDI) or the AWS Data Exchange. In the spirit of collaborating to help solve the global climate crisis, all submitted code for this hackathon will be open source. In this hackathon, learn from other attendees, gain hands-on AWS experience, and build functioning prototypes to address relevant sustainability challenges. For attendees seeking a more guided opportunity, there is a workshop to learn more about using ASDI with AWS.

We are also offering sessions that teach developers how to architect their applications for sustainability. Anyone involved with AWS workloads will want to join Architecting for sustainability (ARC325). In this session, we’ll explore why teams would want to architect sustainably, and then dive into practical actions teams can apply to their own workloads. This session is for engineering teams seeking to include sustainability in their workflows. Also check out Building a sustainable infrastructure with AWS Cloud storage (STG209), covering different storage options at AWS and how using efficient storage options strategically can help teams lower their storage carbon footprint.

The AWS Power and Utilities team has sessions for utilities on how AWS can help cut utility emissions, including How volt-VAR optimization on AWS can cut utility emissions (PNU305). This session will discuss how volt-VAR optimization (VVO) can help utilities lower their carbon footprint. VVO is extremely effective, as illustrated by Ameren Illinois’s report to the Illinois Commerce Commission, which targets a VVO solution to deliver 422 gigawatt-hours of annual energy savings by 2025. Assuming carbon emission equivalent to the US average of 0.92 pounds per kilowatt-hour, this VVO solution could produce a carbon reduction of 175,900 metric tons annually.

Celebrate AWS customers innovating for sustainability

Don’t miss our special premiere video screening of AWS customers addressing climate change and driving sustainability. Climate Next is an original documentary series about AWS customers using AWS technologies to fight climate change. We will host a Q&A reception with featured customers and the producer immediately following the screening. Join us for this special premiere screening at re:Invent Tuesday, November 30 at 6:30-8:00 pm PDT.

Make sure to check the re:Invent sustainability attendee guide to make it easy to find all sessions related to sustainability, as well as searching for sustainability in the session catalog. We hope you can join us—either in person or virtually. Visit the re:Invent website to register today.

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