AWS re:Invent 2025 - Master your AWS carbon impact with the Customer Carbon Footprint Tool (AIM254)

Mastering Your AWS Carbon Impact with the Customer Carbon Footprint Tool

AWS Sustainability Objectives

• AWS is a signatory of the Climate Pledge, committing to be net-zero carbon by 2040.
• Key sustainability initiatives include:
  • 100% renewable energy by 2023 (achieved early)
  • Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) of 1.15, outperforming industry average of 1.25
  • Circularity program that has recovered over 23 million components for reuse and recycling
  • Water positive objective to replace more water than used in data centers by 2030 (currently at 53%)
• AWS operates at massive scale, with 117 Availability Zones across 37 geographic regions, offering 4.1x more compute than on-premises.

Building the Customer Carbon Footprint Tool

• The tool is powered by a "Sustainability Data Platform" that ingests and processes vast amounts of data:
  • Hardware components, data center construction, energy consumption, water usage, and more
  • Over 250 ETL pipelines, 51TB of data, 800 managed datasets, and 30,000 daily queries
• The data is "carbonated" - translated into carbon emissions using scientific modeling and emissions factors.
• An allocation model is used to attribute the overall AWS carbon footprint to individual customer usage.
• The tool provides customers visibility into their monthly carbon footprint across AWS services and regions.

Key Design Principles

• Customer-centric: Built based on direct customer feedback and needs, such as regulatory reporting and sustainability optimization.
• Scalable and Evolvable: Designed to scale and adapt as AWS sustainability initiatives and customer requirements evolve over time.
• Data Quality and Actionability: Emphasis on high-quality, granular data that can directly inform business decisions.
• Security and Governance: Rigorous data security and governance practices to handle sensitive sustainability data.

Recommendations and Next Steps

• Start small when calculating carbon footprint - focus on individual activities and build up over time.
• Leverage the Customer Carbon Footprint Tool in the AWS Billing Console to understand your AWS-related emissions.
• Visit the Sustainability showcase at re:Invent to see a live demo of the tool and learn more.
• Continuously upskill on AWS services and sustainability best practices using AWS Skill Builder.