Amazon and AWS Sustainability News, Milestones, Partnerships and Net Zero Timeline

Here are additional updates.

May 2024: Sustainability News Developments

• Accelerator: The latest Amazon Sustainability Accelerator includes 15 startups from across Europe. The startups focus on such areas circular economy, energy in buildings and packaging. The four-week program is "designed to help start-ups navigate the challenges of scaling a sustainability business." Participants will "meet and work with experts in Amazon’s Sustainability, Climate Pledge Fund and Climate Pledge Friendly teams, attend workshops, receive mentorship and £10,000 worth of AWS Activate Credits." And new this year, startups can "can pitch for the chance to pilot their technology with Amazon, with a potential investment of between £50,000 - £2 million," Amazon said. Related: Special thanks to HT Materials Science (HTMS) -- a startup in the accelerator -- for sending us the news.
• Shareholder Vote: Amazon.com investors voted against all 14 resolutions that asked the retailer to disclose more about its carbon emissions and its directors' donations, and to form a committee to oversee artificial-intelligence development, among other issues, Reuters reported.
• AI Chips - Nvidia Partnership: Amazon will transition from Nvidia Grace Hopper chips to Nvidia Blackwell chips for project Ceiba, a supercomputer that AWS and Nvidia are building together, Reuters reported.
• Electric Vehicles (EVs) - Cargo Trucks: Amazon.com unveiled the first of a dozen Volvo electric big rigs it plans to deploy this year to pick up cargo from the nation's busiest container seaport in Southern California, Reuters reported.
• Partnership: IBM's software portfolio -- spanning AI, security, sustainability and more -- is now available in the AWS Marketplace across 92 countries. The latest additions include Finland, Norway and Sweden.

March 2024: Sustainability News Developments

Multiple updates...

• Data Center Spending: Amazon plans to spend roughly $150 billion on data centers over the next 15 years, AWS VP of Global Data Centers Kevin Miller told Bloomberg.
• Data Management: AWS has released Data Analytics Lens, a "collection of customer-proven design principles, best practices, and prescriptive guidance to help you adopt a cloud-centered approach to running analytics on AWS." The lens includes a focus on sustainability. Key topics include benchmarking, trading data accuracy for carbon, encouraging a data minimization culture, implementing data retention processes, optimizing data modeling, preventing unnecessary data movement, and efficiently managing analytics infrastructure, AWS said.
• Wind Farms: By performing large scale simulations on HPC clusters in the cloud, built using  Amazon EC2 P4d instances and powered by Nvidia A100 GPUs, customers can "get a better understanding of how wind energy affects our atmosphere and the environment as a whole," according to AWS and Whiffle.
• Sustainability Accelerator: The Amazon Sustainability Accelerator 2024 opened for applications on March 4. Related: See dozens of sustainability accelerators listed here.
• Cloud Services - Saudi Arabia: AWS will launch an AWS infrastructure Region in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 2026. AWS plans to invest more than $5.3 billion (approx. 19.88 billion Saudi riyal) in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. AWS emphasized sustainability in the announcement, but we don't know if the Saudi Arabia infrastructure will leverage renewable energy at launch.
• M&A: AWS acquired a nuclear powered, carbon-free data center campus from Talen Energy Corp. for $650 million.

February 2024: Sustainability News Developments

• Partnership - Carbon Accounting for SMBs: AWS is partnering with Sage Earth to promote carbon accounting software for SMB customers.
• AI Chips: Amazon continues to invest in AWS Trinium — a chip family that's designed to "reduce the time and cost of training generative AI models — cutting training time for some models from months to hours," the company said.
• Amazon Server Lifespan: Amazon is increasing the "useful life" of servers from 5 years to 6 years beginning in January 2024. The move will improve operating income by approximately $900 million in Q1, CFO Brian Olsavsky said.

January 2024: Sustainability News Developments

• IT Services, AI and AWS: Capgemini and Amazon Web Services (AWS) have expanded their partnership to focus on AI. The effort will include steps to help customers address their sustainability goals, the two companies said.
• Power Purchase Agreement: Amazon has signed a corporate power purchase agreement (CPPA) with ENGIE. The deal will allow Amazon to source power from an offshore wind farm in Scotland.
• Solar and Wind Projects: With more than 500 solar and wind projects globally, Amazon's portfolio is now big enough to power 7.2 million U.S. homes each year, the e-commerce and cloud giant said.
• Building Energy Management: BrainBox AI has joined the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Partner Network (APN). BrainBox's technology, aligned with HVAC systems allows building owners to reduce energy consumption and associated emissions. Related Podcast: BrainBox AI CEO Sam Ramadori describes building energy management (BEM) trends.
• United Kingdom Wind Power: Amazon is reportedly set to announce a "significant investment" in the Moray West offshore wind farm, aiming to power its entire UK operations, Energy Live News reported.

November 2023: Sustainability News Developments

• AWS re:Invent Conference: When the AWS re:Invent 2023 conference kicks off, sustainability discussions will emerge in multiple AI (artificial intelligence), cloud services and hardware sessions. Indeed, key partners such as Adobe, Capgemini, Ericsson, HCLTech, Kone and Siemens Energy will discuss various sustainability solutions and strategies during numerous conference sessions.

More: Continue to the next page for earlier sustainability updates.