Company Interview / How Aussie businesses can reduce their AI carbon footprint

Key points:

AWS cloud services can reduce AI workload carbon footprints by up to 99%Graviton processors increase energy efficiency by up to 60%Amazon's Climate Pledge aims for net-zero emissions by 2040

Jenna Leiner from AWS shares insights on reducing the carbon footprint of AI workloads as Australian organisations scale their AI use. Jenna explains how partnering with Accenture shows that running optimised workloads on AWS can be up to 3.2 times more energy efficient than on-premise data centres.

She emphasises AWS's investment in sustainable infrastructure, such as their custom AWS Graviton processors. The latest Graviton iteration uses 60% less energy for the same performance. Global health company Illumina has already seen an 89% reduction in carbon emissions through AWS's sustainable infrastructure.

Jenna mentions Amazon's 2023 sustainability report, reinforcing their Climate Pledge to be net zero by 2040. She acknowledges efforts in collaboration with suppliers and customers to achieve these sustainability goals, despite scrutiny on Amazon's environmental record.

Full unedited transcript below:

0:11

Well as organisations in Australia scale their use of artificial intelligence. How can companies help reduce the carbon footprint of AI workloads compared to on premise data centers? Jenna Lena from AWS joins me now. Jenna, just tell us some how companies can achieve this.

0:28

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you said it right. As organizations in Australia are scaling that use of AI, they're also becoming really conscious about the environmental footprint. And it's really going hand in hand with a lot of considerations when it comes to the IT environment. Amazon, Amazon Web Services, we have our own sustainability goals around being net zero by 2040. But what I wanted to do is really understand that sustainability goes beyond our own operations. And how are we helping customers achieve their own goals as they're moving through this digital transformation and adoption of these digital services, such as AI. So we engage with Accenture to find out exactly this. Accenture eight was able to conclude that by running optimize workloads on AWS across APAC is up to 3.2 times more energy efficient compared to an average on premise data centre. And here in Australia, customers can actually reduce the carbon footprint by up to 99% for operational and embodied emissions for hardware. Now,

1:28

when you think 85% of global IT spend is still running on premise and, uh, third party IDC actually says that holds true for APAC as well. There is tremendous opportunity for Australian organisations to take that first step, migrate workloads to the cloud, such as AWS, to reduce those IT related carbon footprint emissions. Um, Amazon, more broadly, the parent company is seeing its a carbon footprint lower in its latest annual sustainability report. Just tell us what their company and AWS is doing in terms of carbon intensity and trying to get to these goals.

2:05

Absolutely. At AWS, I mean, across our global infrastructure portfolio, we continuously look for innovations in energy efficiency. As more customers are coming over to our cloud and leveraging our services, we have to continually innovate for them to build the most sustainable infrastructure. One way in which we do that, and probably the most visible way that we do that, is invest in AWS chips. We launched our first custom AWS engineered general purpose processor called graviton back in 2018, and that was the first of its kind to be deployed at scale by a major cloud provider. Our AWS graviton processors, they are designed to cost in a custom way. Um, and they're developed by AWS to not only provide the best price performance for cloud workloads running on, um, on Amazon EC2, but also looking at the latest iteration being graviton three uses 60% less energy for the same performance as comparable Amazon EC2 instances. We've now released graviton four, which is even

3:05

more energy efficient. So it's these type of innovations at the ground that is really helping AWS build more sustainable infrastructure, but also allowing our customers to leverage these AWS chips to run their workloads on. And we've seen success, uh, a global an example is a global health company, Illumina. They realized an 89% reduction of carbon emissions by using AWS. So we're really starting to see that that come to fruition for our customers. And our solution. Architects are working hand in hand to make sure customers are not only leveraging our sustainable infrastructure, but also thinking about how to architect for sustainability on our cloud as well, because there's there's multiple levers there to be pulled. So 15 years until 2040, almost or just over, I should say. How confident is AWS of reaching those goals?

3:55

So Amazon recently released our 2023 sustainability report, reinforcing what we call the Climate Pledge. So back in 2019, we co-founded the Climate Pledge with global optimism. And we were the first signatory to commit to being net zero by 2040. Those results that came out about a month ago now really reinforce that we are on our way there. We're not saying it's easy, but across the Amazon business units, with AWS being one of them, everyone is working towards it. And we are we are still committed to that goal by 2040 and it's not going to be alone. I should say either. We are working with our suppliers at AWS, we are working with our customers because it really is going to be a joint effort. There has been, though, a lot of scrutiny on Amazon, the parent company, about environmental record and of course, in terms of the shipments as well. So talk to us a little bit more about shipment zero and how Amazon is, is, I guess, trying to rectify some of that customer backlash about their

4:54

environmental footprint.

4:56

I mean, it all comes down to our sustainability report, right? That's a voluntary report we put out there each year. The number of pages gets more and more. I think what we're trying to do is really demonstrate all of the different ways, all of the different levers that Amazon being who we are with our size and scale and our ability to influence whole industries, is really starting to to move the needle across our broad spectrum of business units. I am not the best person to talk deeply about other Amazon business units, because I am the the ESG lead for AWS and our data center business. But I do know, I mean, through that commitment that recommitment and through that transparency in our sustainability report, we are trying to demonstrate to our customers how we are really trying to move the needle across multiple industries.