China’s cloud push comes at a huge environmental cost — and has implications for Microsoft and others
A new study shows that major Chinese cloud computing and data center companies are making slow progress in adopting renewable energy.
The Green Peace A report shows that VNEP Group, the operator of Microsoft 365 in China, uses only 4.35% renewable energy.
The news comes days after it was revealed that China plans to increase its computing power by 30% by 2025 to meet demand for artificial intelligence and energy-guzzling data centers.
China’s Dirty Data Centers
The Clean Cloud 2024 report assesses 10 cloud providers and 15 data center operators in China, which together accounted for more than half (52%) of the IaaS market in the first half of 2023.
Alarmingly, only eight companies – Tencent, ByteDance, Kuaishou Technology, GDS, VNET Group, Chindata Group, Shanghai AtHub and Bohao Internet Data Services – have committed to a full transition to renewable energy by 2030, a milestone cited by major companies worldwide as a key date to control emissions and mitigate the impact of global warming.
Some companies are already making promising progress: Alibaba Cloud has purchased 1.6 billion kWh of renewable energy in 2023, and Tencent has signed a contract to buy 1.3 billion kWh in 2024. Still, these companies are not reflective of the entire sector.
The survey shows that Baidu’s use of renewable energy is 5.11% and VNET Group’s is 4.35%. This is alarming given the rapid expansion of the country’s computing capacity.
The organization ranked the cloud providers out of 100 for transparency, carbon reduction measures and targets, renewable energy procurement and targets, and government and industry influence. Only two companies received a score around 90: Alibaba Group and Tencent.
Baidu, ByteDance and Huawei were the only ones to score above 50, while UCloud came in last with a score of 15.
In the report, Greenpeace calls for greater transparency in reporting renewable energy use for greater accountability, as well as stronger efforts to meet national policy requirements. Greenpeace also urges companies to aim for 100% renewable energy in Scopes 1, 2 and 3 by the end of the decade.