The cloud and the environment: a sustainable partnership?

The cloud: a twofold impact

The cloud is based on the functional economy model. In the case of the public cloud (IaaS, PaaS or SaaS), rather than purchasing and deploying infrastructure in-house, a company ‘rents’ a service, whose infrastructure and application environments are highly shared and optimised in terms of scaling and workload. It uses this service on demand, according to its current needs. Any resources it is not using at a given moment may be used by another organisation. Through this ‘economy of functionality’ model alone, a company can reduce its environmental impact. For a given service, the cloud enables infrastructure and applications to be shared to the greatest possible extent.

That said, certain practices can negate, or even lead to the opposite effect: inappropriate or insufficiently controlled usage and the rebound effect, also known as the Jevons paradox. For example, if a company migrates environments serving the same purpose to the public cloud, this can have potentially positive leverage effects in terms of both reducing its carbon footprint and cutting costs. However, if that company migrates these same environments whilst adding new services or failing to manage the associated usage, it will potentially consume more resources than before and thus increase its environmental impact (and possibly its costs as well).

The overall impact of the cloud is increasing as a result of the transfer of impacts from customers migrating to these new services. This transfer occurs through the outsourcing of customer activities. The impact is also increasing with the more general rise in digital usage relying on cloud services. Effective governance can help to limit these impacts. This phenomenon is not unique to the cloud; it applies across all forms of digital usage. Today, the digital sector is one of the sectors where, by 2030, GHG emissions are projected to double, rising from 4 per cent of total global emissions to around 8 per cent. The growth in energy demand has also been exacerbated in recent years by the accelerated use of AI. Energy consumption by tech companies rose by 18.5 per cent in absolute terms between 2021 and 2023 (see AdVaes study from March 2025), and by nearly 9 per cent on average per year over this period. Cloud and data centre operators have experienced the strongest growth compared with other market players, such as software publishers and digital services companies (ESN). However, early indications for 2024, based on AdVaes’ ongoing analyses, show that these players are managing to contain this trend through the optimisation measures they have implemented.

The optimisation measures to be implemented also relate to how these services are used. End customers also bear responsibility for their use of the cloud. The levers to be activated concern both providers and customers. There is shared responsibility.

Best practices and cloud governance

In January 2025, EuroCloud France published a Guide to Best Practices for an Environmentally Responsible Cloud. This provides guidance on best practices implemented by the industry, as well as on the standards to which organisations should adhere.

Among the measures identified to manage the environmental impact on the part of cloud service providers and IT directors are various actions such as: using the right components for hardware, extending the lifespan of equipment, maximising server utilisation rates, optimising latency, choosing locations to process data as close as possible to the source (edge), all measures to improve backups, data cleansing, automating the shutdown of a service when it is not or is no longer in use, removing unused instances, using smaller models for AI training, optimising security protocols, selecting disaster recovery plans (double or triple redundancy), etc. When making a choice, it is important to consider the cooling systems favoured by data centres, as well as the energy sources used, favouring low-carbon or renewable options. It is also important to ensure that circular economy processes are properly in place and that service providers handling them do so in compliance with regulations. All stakeholders in the chain have rights and responsibilities in this regard.

And, to act responsibly, it is also necessary to carry out measurements that take into account the entire life cycle of a cloud service. Software solutions for assessing the environmental impact of cloud services are now available on the market. AdVaes compared them as part of a benchmark study published in June 2025. These solutions may cover only the cloud environment or extend beyond it to encompass the wider IT environment. They may focus solely on measuring the carbon footprint or assist in carrying out LCAs (Life Cycle Assessment). They can also help with simulations to determine the best options.

The concept of ‘responsibility’ encompasses various dimensions. There are, of course, the environmental impacts, in relation to which all or some of the actions mentioned above may be implemented. It is also a matter of taking into account societal implications, in terms of ethics, security, trust and resilience. These ESG issues are systemic and closely linked to the economy, performance and finance.

Only (sound) governance allows us to assess them as a whole and evaluate the risks and benefits of each.

🌟🌟🌟 To watch the replay of the special edition of Dossiers BFM Business from 4 October 2025, ‘The Cloud: Between a Driver of Innovation and a Challenge to Sovereignty’, click here (the environmental section begins at 17:40).