AWS Data Center Charge Grows With $9B To Expand Cloud Services, Sustainability

The cloud giant is investing $9 billion to expand its data center and cloud footprint in Australia.

Amazon Web Services is continuing to pour billions into expanding its cloud computing footprint as the world’s largest cloud company Tuesday unveiled a $9 billion investment in Australia.

The Seattle-based $85 billion cloud giant will spend $9 billion over the next five years to enhance its Australia-based data centers, which power AWS’ Cloud Regions, while working toward running its data centers entirely on renewable energy.

“AWS is committed to improving sustainability in Australia. We are on path toward powering all of our operations with 100 percent renewable energy by 2025—five years ahead of our original target of 2030,” said AWS in a new report announcing its $9 billion Australian investment.

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AWS is investing tens of billions into boosting its cloud services reach both abroad and inside the U.S.

This year, AWS unveiled plans to invest $35 billion in building data centers across Virginia by 2024 to increase its customer base and computing capabilities. In January, AWS launched two new AWS Local Zones in Chile and Australia.

The cloud titan has plans to launch over 20 more Local Zones in metro areas on a global basis. These Local Zones place AWS compute, storage, database and other services in popular locations.

Amazon Sustainability Push

Amazon has launched a Sustainability Data Initiative that aims to accelerate sustainability research and innovation by helping customers minimize the cost and time required to acquire and analyze large sustainability data sets.

Amazon is committed to reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2040 as part of The Climate Pledge, ten years ahead of the Paris Agreement.

AWS is continually working on ways to increase the energy efficiency of its facilities and equipment, and innovating the design and manufacture of its servers, storage and networking equipment to reduce energy and water use and limit waste. AWS expects to be water positive by 2030, returning more water to communities than it uses in its direct operations.

On the product innovation front, AWS launched a new Customer Carbon Footprint Tool to help customers calculate the environmental impact of their AWS workloads. The tool uses data visualizations to provide customers with their historical carbon emissions, evaluate emission trends as their AWS use evolves, estimate the tonnage of carbon emissions avoided by using AWS instead of on-premises data centers, and review forecast emissions based on current use.

AWS’ $9 Billion Spending Breakdown

Approximately $7.5 billion of the new five-year Australian investment will go toward the company’s Sydney cloud region, while the remaining roughly $1.5 billion will be spent on expanding its data center infrastructure in its new Melbourne campus.

The $9 billion in investment also includes about $500 million toward expanding AWS edge and cloud infrastructure across Australia to boost its Availability Zones with high-speed fiber connectivity via new telecom partnerships.

AWS has two cloud regions in Australia each with three Availability Zones, two AWS Direct locations and one Local Zone.