AWS re:Invent 2024: Can Amazon and Partners Propel Sustainable IT Services Forward?

At the AWS re:Invent 2024 conference, Amazon executives and its sustainable IT services partners hope to end the year on a high note.

Dozens of guest speakers (pictured randomly above and some listed below) and roughly 25 content sessions will focus on sustainability, energy efficiency, carbon reduction and net-zero business strategies.

Sustainable IT Services: Marching Forward Amid Market Headwinds

Those AWS re:Invent 2024 discussions arrive at a critical time. Indeed, multiple geopolitical developments have raised question marks about net-zero efforts worldwide. Among the areas of potential concern:

• At the COP29 conference -- hosted during November 2024 in Baku, Azerbaijan -- rich countries vowed to help poor and emerging countries with their climate-related costs, but some critics considered the agreement to be "too little, too late."
• CSRD, the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, went into effect in January 2023. But some critics are calling on the European Union to weaken or roll back the regulation.
• Businesses worldwide are wondering if president-elect Donald Trump will pull the United States from the Paris agreement, and curtail various federal programs for renewable energy and climate tech solutions.
• Data centers are consuming more and more energy amid power-hungry generative AI (genAI) application rollouts. As a result, many data center and cloud companies will need to rewrite and/or adjust their sustainable IT strategies.

AWS Leaders, Partners Describe Sustainable IT Strategies

Amid those potential market headwinds, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and many partners continue to promote sustainable IT services strategies that may help customers with their net-zero strategies.

The evidence: At the AWS re:Invent 2024 conference (December 2-6, Las Vegas, Nevada), watch for these sustainable IT discussions to emerge (among others):

1. Advancing sustainable AWS infrastructure to power AI solutions - lightning talk featuring:

• Erin Petrey, sustainability program manager

2. Advancing sustainable AWS infrastructure to power AI solutions, featuring:

• Michael Stiller, head of new initiatives, Nasdaq; and
• Chris Walker, director of sustainability

3. Assessing climate risk with spatial analysis on AWS, featuring:

• Tracey Reid, VP, Tokio Marine Highland;
• Javier de la Torre, founder and CSO, Carto; and
• Marco Masciola, senior partner solutions architect

4. Black Swan vs Green Swan: Powering sustainability with data and AI

• Tej Vakta, head of sustainability solutions and global wealth management domain leader, Capgemini; and
• Sapna Sardana, managing director, Barclays Investment Bank

5. Cutting costs and carbon: Using AWS Graviton3 in streaming

• Jason O'Malley, senior partner solutions architect
• Elliott Nash, head of infrastructure

6. Data-driven Sustainability with AWS, featuring:

• Jessica Benoit, senior sustainability specialist
• Rene Greiner, data and digital lead, Ocean Transportation, Cargill International SA

7. Destination zero: Insights and tactics for sustainable architectures

• Steffen Grunwald, principal solutions architect
• Alexis Bateman, head of AWS sustainability tech

8. ESG reporting with generative AI and sustainability data fabric on AWS, featuring:

• Sundeep Ramachandran, worldwide sustainability partner solutions architect

9. Honda's EV charging experience with Amazon Bedrock and AWS IoT Core, featuring

• Hideharu Takamiya, general manager, Honda
• Bei Liu, senior cloud architect, Amazon Web Services Japan G.K.
• Tsubasa Watanabe, senior solutions architect, Amazon Web Service Japan

10. How climate-tech startups build on AWS to address climate change, featuring:

• Benoit de Chateauvieux, climate tech solutions architect
• Lisbeth Kaufman, head of climate tech startups BD

11. How to design your HPC cluster in the cloud for sustainability, featuring:

• Francesco Ruffino, HPC specialist SA

12. Improve sustainability and reduce costs with AWS Graviton, featuring

• Chad Schmutzer, pr SA sustainability, Graviton
• Marcin Bednarz, Principal, Solutions Architect, Amazon

13. Integrating generative AI effectively into sustainability strategies, featuring

• Bianca Mota, startup solutions architect
• Paulo Moncores, co-founder, Mercado Diferente
• Rahul Sareen, global lead, sustainability and AI solutions

14. Managing value-chain product carbon emissions with generative AI, featuring

• Jonas Burkel, senior solutions architect, AWS EMEA SARL

15. Mitigating climate change with methane detection solutions on AWS, featuring:

• Patricia Carroll, senior sustainability specialist

16. Optimizing generative AI workloads for sustainability, featuring:

• Raman Pujani, solutions architect

17. Physical climate risk assessment and analysis using AWS services, featuring:

• Patricia Carroll, senior sustainability specialist
• Raman Pujani, solutions architect

18. Scepter Inc uses big data to reduce methane emissions, featuring:

• Emily Reidy, research scientist, ExxonMobil
• Chantz Thomas, senior space consultant
• Philip Father, Founder & CEO, Scepter

19. Sustainable urban spaces, featuring

• Guyu Ye, sustainability solutions architect
• Pauline Ting, AI/ML specialist

20. Traceable sustainability: How to approach biodiversity tracking, featuring:

• Daisy Riley, prototype architect
• Thomas Attree, senior solutions architect

21. Training and certification support in your sustainability journey, featuring:

• Perry Beaumont, senior product manager

22. Transforming BMW sustainability operations with AWS and Catena-X, featuring:

• Ameet Vaswani, head of technology, AWS Supply Chain, AWS
• Oliver Ganser, VP - Processes, Digitalization, Governance and Catena-X, BMW Group
• Anna Kantur, senior product manager, AWS Supply Chain Sustainability, AWS

23. Transforming smart metering for sustainable resource use with AWS IoT, featuring:

• Simon Higgins, innovation director, Callisto (data business) part of the Morrison Group Company
• Dave Kranzler, GM AWS Solutions, IoT Foundational Services, AWS
• John Oshodi, Senior Solutions Architect, AWS

24. Using AI/ML for sustained energy efficiency in industrial operations, featuring:

• Maija Anderson, senior practice manager, AWS
• Marco Caserta, Applied Scientist, Amazon
• Jorn Deiseroth, CIO Volkswagen Poznań, Volkswagen Poznań Sp. z o.o.

25. Using generative AI large language models for sustainability reporting, featuring:

• Parth Patel, senior solution architect
• Christian Tomeldan, senior solutions architect

Sustainability Progress, Challenges

The speaker lineup certainly promises in-depth sustainability expertise. And Amazon's own sustainability strategy continues to march forward.

Still, some critics continue to raise questions about the effort. Among the anecdotes to note:

• Tech giants Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Meta say they buy enough wind, solar or geothermal power every time a big data center comes online to cancel out its emissions, The Washington Post reports. But critics see a shell game with these contracts: The companies are operating off the same power grid as everyone else, while claiming for themselves much of the finite amount of green energy, the Post asserted. Utilities are then backfilling those purchases with fossil fuel expansions, regulatory filings show, the report claimed.
• Moreover, most Amazon corporate workers are worried that senior leadership is misleading the public about Amazon's climate impact, according to an independent survey spanning 800 Amazon workers.

We'll keep those points in mind as we watch AWS re:Invent 2024 for new sustainable IT services, products, partners and milestones.