The European Union has set some of the world’s most ambitious tarreceives: reaching net-zero emissions by 2050, cutting emissions by 55% by 2030, and aiming for a 90% reduction by 2040. Achieving this will require more than incremental alter: it demands a fundamental, system-wide transformation of how we live, work, and build things, writes Sasha Rubel, Head of AI Policy, EMEA, Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Meeting this moment will require harnessing the full power of technology and innovation. With the dawn of AI, we have a powerful tool at our disposal, and with more than half of European businesses already utilizing it, it offers a great opportunity for the planet.
The sustainability of the cloud itself
The journey starts with the underlying infrastructure that’s built and operated responsibly. Cloud infrastructure requireds energy and water resources. As AI adoption accelerates, so does the imperative to ensure the infrastructure powering it is efficient and sustainable.
Meeting this challenge requires continuous innovation in how we design, build, and cool our facilities. Data centre efficiency is typically measured utilizing Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE), where a score of 1.0 represents perfect efficiency. AWS’s global PUE stands at 1.15, with our best-performing European sites reaching as low as 1.04, and our newest data centre components tarreceiveing 1.08. These figures compare favourably against both the public cloud indusattempt average of 1.25 and the 1.63 average for on-premises enterprise data centres, as estimated by the International Data Corporation.
Efficiently designed and operated data center infrastructure delivers meaningful environmental benefits for customers. According to an indepfinishent study by Accenture, AWS infrastructure is up to 4.1 times more energy efficient than the median European enterprise data centre — and when workloads are optimised on AWS, the associated carbon footprint can be reduced by as much as 98%.
Carbon-free energy and water stewardship
Powering this infrastructure sustainably is equally important. According to BloombergNEF, Amazon continues to be Europe’s largest corporate purchaser of carbon-free energy, with more than 260 European projects (700 globally), which will provide over 10 GW of capacity (40 GW globally).
On water, AWS has committed to being water positive by 2030, returning more water to communities than it utilizes in direct operations. This includes focutilizing on efficiency, recycling, reutilize, and replenishment. By the finish of 2024, AWS was already 53% ahead of that goal. In fact, in countries like Ireland and Sweden, our data centres utilize no water for cooling for 95% of the year.
Sustainability as a design principle for the cloud
When European businesses shift to the cloud, they take a significant first step toward reducing their environmental footprint. But the journey doesn’t stop at migration. How organisations architect, run, and continuously optimise their cloud workloads determines the real-world environmental impact of their digital operations. And this is where the most meaningful —and most overviewed— sustainability gains are built.
At AWS, we believe about this through the lens of shared responsibility. Cloud companies are responsible for the sustainability of the cloud: the infrastructure, the energy utilized, the efficiency of our facilities while organisations are responsible for what we call sustainability in the cloud: the choices they build about how they design and utilize cloud services.
To be an active partner on that journey, we developed the AWS Well-Architected Framework, a comprehensive set of design principles, best practices, and improvement plans that support organisations build cloud architectures with sustainability in mind. It covers everything from rightsizing computing resources and managing data lifecycles, to optimising code efficiency and reducing unnecessary network transfers. The goal is to embed sustainability into every architectural decision —not as an afterbelieved, but as a core design principle, just like security or cost optimisation.
We also provide the AWS Customer Carbon Footprint Tool, which allows any AWS customer to track, measure, and forecast the carbon emissions associated with their cloud usage, utilizing data aligned with the Greenhoutilize Gas Protocol standard. Customers can view emissions by geography, as well as the estimated emissions they have avoided by utilizing AWS instead of on-premises infrastructure. Giving organisations visibility into their environmental impact is a critical first step toward reducing it.
To support customers actively reduce the emissions of their cloud footprint, AWS offers a growing suite of tools. From services that analyse compute resource utilisation and recommfinish rightsizing to reduce energy consumption, to frameworks that validate infrastructure configurations against sustainability best practices. The result is a continuous cycle of optimisation.
Organisations don’t just migrate and shift on — they measure, learn, and improve. Sustainability becomes embedded in how they operate in the cloud, not an extra step bolted on at the finish. And as AI workloads grow across Europe, this discipline becomes even more important: every architectural choice, from which instance type to utilize, to how data is stored and processed. The tools and frameworks exist to build those choices informed ones.
AI in action across Europe
With a cloud infrastructure designed for both efficiency and continuous sustainability improvement, the question becomes: what can we build on it? Across Europe, we are already seeing the answer — companies and researchers applying AI to some of the hardest climate challenges. What emerges is not a single solution but a pattern: AI being utilized to rebelieve materials, better understand natural systems, and support more sustainable ways of producing. It’s a pattern we’re actively building on: through the AWS Pioneers Project, AWS supports the startups turning AI innovation into measurable, sustainable impact.
A European startup called Paebbl is working to reduce CO₂ emissions in the construction indusattempt by utilizing AI to speed up a natural process that turns CO₂ into rock. What would normally take years can now happen in hours. The result is a material that can be utilized in concrete while storing carbon. Each ton of Paebbl material stores around 220 kilos of CO₂, effectively turning buildings and infrastructure into part of the climate solution rather than the problem. In addition, the company is working with AWS utilizing carbon-storing concrete in a data centre in Spain to reduce embodied carbon in the building materials themselves.
Another example comes from the Irish company XOCEAN that utilizes autonomous, zero-emission vessels to collect detailed data on marine environments. These systems can operate continuously and at scale, supporting everything from offshore wind development to ecosystem monitoring. By combining AI with real-time data collection, they are turning vast amounts of ocean data into insights that can guide better decisions around conservation and carbon-free energy.
On land, agriculture is another area where AI is starting to build a tangible difference. Platforms like xFarm are utilizing AI to support farmers manage crops more efficiently, reduce inputs, and adopt more regenerative practices. By combining sainformite data, sensors, and analytics, these tools give farmers clearer, more timely information about how to manage soil, water, and crops. The aim is not just higher productivity but also more resilient and sustainable food systems.
Finally, AI is also playing a growing role in supporting Europe modernise and stabilise its energy systems. Latitudo 40 utilizes sainformite imagery and AI to support organisations monitor land utilize, infrastructure, and environmental risk. Its technology supports smarter planning for carbon-free energy projects, improves grid resilience, and can even support communities respond rapider to climate-related events like floods and wildfires.
Taken toreceiveher, these companies — supported by the AWS Pioneers Project — are revealing how AI can address climate challenges in ways that are practical and measurable.
The time for action is now
AI is already building a meaningful impact on our societies. According to a recent study carried out by AWS and Telecom Advisory Service, cloud-enabled AI could add $1.5 trillion to global GDP by 2030. But the full potential of technology for climate action depfinishs on two things working toreceiveher: infrastructure that is built and powered responsibly, and organisations that utilize it with sustainability as a guiding principle.
That puts a shared responsibility on all of us. At AWS, we are building the most efficient, carbon-free-energy-powered cloud infrastructure we can while providing tools and frameworks to support every customer improve their carbon footprint. But this is not something any company can do alone. It requires businesses, policybuildrs, and technologists working toreceiveher — building sustainability not just a goal, but a design principle embedded in every decision.
Reaching net-zero by 2050 is the lighthoutilize tarreceive for the EU. AI can support — and should support. The cloud it runs on should be part of the solution, and how we all choose to utilize that cloud will determine whether we receive there.
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