Chinese host Microsoft 365 uses just four percent renewable energy: Greenpeace • The Register

China’s biggest cloud computing and data centre players are not going green in a hurry, according to a Greenpeace study, meaning Microsoft is tied with a data centre operator that uses just 4.35 percent renewable energy.

The latest study by Clean Cloud (PDF) surveyed the top 10 cloud service providers and 15 data center operators in China, which together accounted for more than 52 percent of China’s infrastructure as a service (IaaS) market in the first half of 2023 and more than 60 percent of the internet data center market in 2022.

The group found that just eight companies – Tencent, ByteDance, Kuaishou Technology, GDS, VNET Group, Chindata Group, Shanghai AtHub and Bohao Internet Data Services – have announced plans to switch to renewable energy by 2030.

The study also found that Alibaba Group has committed to 100 percent utilization of Alibaba Cloud and that Alibaba Group purchased 1.61 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of renewable energy in 2023. Tencent said its total renewable energy contracts would exceed 1.3 billion kWh in 2024.

Ninety percent of the suppliers considered had implemented distributed photovoltaic projects in their data centers or operational buildings, and more than a dozen of them were involved in green energy trading.

But some haven’t yet tapped into many renewable energy sources. The study found that Baidu uses renewable energy sources for 5.11 percent of its energy needs, while VNET Group, the operator of Microsoft 365 in China, uses just 4.35 percent of renewable energy sources.

VNET has, however, set carbon neutrality targets for Scope 1 and 2 emissions, which cover the energy sources an entity chooses to consume, such as fuel for vehicles and electricity for facilities. Twelve of the 13 companies considered have done so.

The report says this state of affairs is worrying, as Chinese policy calls on local tech companies to do better. And because the Middle Kingdom’s computing fleet is growing rapidly: As we reported earlier this week, the country is on track to add 70 exaFLOPS of computing power over the next 18 months. Doing so will require countless megawatts of energy, and the greener it is, the better for all of us.

Greenpeace calls on Chinese cloud and data center operators to be more transparent in future reports. Good luck, people. ®