Addressing the Environmental Toll of Cloud Computing, AI & Data Centers
Cloud Sustainability Watch is a nonprofit website enabling technologists to adopt sustainable computing
You Can Be the Solution
Technologists need a place to find green software tools and sustainable IT information quickly.
This website serves that need.
Cloud Sustainability Watch acts as a free hub for sustainable computing resources across the web.
Click Plan a Project to access practical steps that walk through a green computing project.
Need to find Sustainable Computing Tools, expert Consultants or Training? They are in our Directories.
Our free “Guide to Sustainable Computing” serves software & web developers, architects, Dev/Cloud Ops, and IT leaders.
Our Explore Issues pages and Resource Link Library provide context and background on data centers, AI, and cloud computing.
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Every day, decisions about software applications and websites impact our communities and environment
75% of technologists would like to reduce the environmental impact of their work but over 50% don’t know how and just 11% measure & manage IT carbon emissions
Most organizations don’t consider the resource consumption and carbon emissions of their computing decisions.
But online computing takes a bite from the world’s scarce resources.
Building a slide presentation or coding software affects the environment because the user devices, networks, and data centers that deliver online applications consume water and power and drive carbon emissions. AI’s explosive growth is adding fuel to the fire.
This escalating problem requires attention from those who can reverse it: the creators of online applications.
Applying green principles during planning and deployment cuts power use, cloud bills, and environmental impact. In turn, users and customers can choose green applications over conventional ones.
Every Action Makes a Lasting Difference
Every step that saves water, power, carbon emissions, and air pollution brings permanent improvement. Even small reductions become meaningful over years of use.
Even better, most sustainable computing decisions reduce cloud bills.
Monitoring power consumption makes it easier to find efficiency improvements that lower computing charges. And removing unused data reduces storage fees while increasing server utilization requires less capacity. There are tools for AI, CloudOps, power, web, and more.
When technology decision makers and creators adopt sustainable computing as the standard, they cut their platforms’ climate impacts and optimize resource consumption.
Only 15% of organizations use sustainability as a key criterion in AI vendor selection
But 54% agree GenAI has a higher carbon footprint than traditional IT programs
-CapGemini Research Institute 2025