Top 10: Data Centre Energy Leaders
Sustainability has become quite a buzzword in the data centre industry, but there are some companies that are powering changes to ensure the environment is a key consideration moving forward.
As AI and other disruptive technologies continue to harness large amounts of power, energy and water to run, data centre operators are forced to reckon with the impact this has on their emissions. In response, organisations are pioneering new technologies and systems that prioritise sustainable innovation.
Here are some of the leading energy leaders operating across the data centre industry.
10. GDS Holdings
HQ: Shanghai, China
CEO: William Huang
Revenue: RMB10,322.1 million/US$1,414.1m (2024)
GDS is a leading developer and operator of high-performance data centres in China. The company offers a range of mission-critical data centre services, including colocation, managed hosting and managed cloud services.
Given the boost in AI and data centre innovation in the nation, GDS Holdings’ net revenue surged in 2023 and the company continues to deliver carrier-neutral solutions. Reporting a 38% usage of renewable energy across its data centre portfolio, GDS continues to demonstrate a commitment to sustainability and many of its data centres have achieved a green certification.
9. CyrusOne
HQ: Texas, US
CEO: Eric Schwartz
Revenue: Not listed
CyrusOne focuses on serving the needs of business and enterprise clients, offering expansive colocation solutions. Through its advanced network and cloud computing capabilities, CyrusOne facilitates direct interconnection, which aims to boost efficiency and performance.
The company continues to expand its global footprint as it prioritises scaling data centres in a sustainable way. Across Europe, its operations have already reached 100% renewable energy use – with the company now eager to enhance energy efficiency of its data centre facilities worldwide.
CyrusOne was also a founding member of the Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact.
8. KDDI / Telehouse
HQ: Tokyo, Japan (KDDI)
CEO: Makoto Takahashi (KDDI)
Revenue: US$39.25bn (KDDI, 2024)
Telehouse, KDDI Group's data centre brand, enables digital transformation through interconnecting enterprise users with service providers. Its London Docklands campus was its first data centre and remains the primary home of the London Internet Exchange.
Providing leading data centre colocation services, Telehouse operates Europe’s most carrier-dense data centre ecosystem, which includes leading internet exchanges, cloud service providers, ISPs and ASPs.
Telehouse aims to achieve net zero CO2 emissions across data centre operations by 2026, with its facilities already equipped with energy-efficient air conditioning technologies. A key target for KDDI is to achieve 100% renewable energy usage in its global data centres by the end of fiscal year 2025.
7. Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
HQ: Mountain View, US
CEO: Sundar Pichai
Revenue: US$84.74bn (Google, 2024)
Google is continuing to expand its global data centre presence and is seeking out numerous sites worldwide to develop interconnected data centres and support rising customer demand in an age of digital transformation.
Despite facing criticism for its emissions increasing in 2024, Google is eager to prioritise sustainability across its data centres. Google Cloud in particular has an ambitious goal to operate on 24/7 carbon-free energy across its global data centre network by 2030 and remains committed to responsible water use.
6. Meta
HQ: Menlo Park, US
CEO: Mark Zuckerberg
Revenue: US$164.5bn (2024)
Meta’s data centres are a part of the tech giant’s global infrastructure that works to bring technologies and services to life. In line with its refined sustainability strategy, the company’s data centres operate with 100% renewable energy and aim to focus on water conservation and restoration, hoping to become water positive by 2030 to restore more water than it consumes.
In 2025, the company has announced plans to build a 2GW data centre that would cover a significant part of Manhattan and enable AI digital transformation.
5. NTT Global Data Centers
HQ: Tokyo, Japan
CEO: Douglas Adams
Revenue: Not listed
NTT Global Data Centers is one of the largest data centre operators in the world. With more than 150 data centres across 20 countries, the company offers local-to-global data centre expertise, aligned with its connected platform of AI-ready data centres to create scalable solutions.
The company is increasingly prioritising sustainability with a goal of net zero emissions across its operations and its entire value chain by 2040. In 2023, the company managed to reduce its emissions by 25% in 2023 and increase its renewable energy use by 42%.
4. Equinix
HQ: California, US
CEO: Adaire Fox-Martin
Revenue: US$8.7bn (2024)
Equinix focuses on retail colocation and provides services to multiple customers with smaller individual power capacity requirements within the same data halls. The company is also advancing its sustainability leadership via its Future First strategy, demonstrating its long-term dedication to reducing environmental impact while delivering efficient digital infrastructure solutions.
“In 2024, we remained true to our commitments around sustainability and operational excellence, delivering greater than five nines of uptime for our customers and improving our power usage effectiveness (PUE) by more than 6%,” shares company CEO Adaire Fox-Martin.
“We also achieved our seventh consecutive year of greater than 90% renewable energy coverage and executed 370 megawatts of new power purchase agreements (PPAs).”
3. Digital Realty
HQ: Texas, US
CEO: Andy Power
Revenue: US$5.5bn (2024)
Under CEO Andy Power’s leadership, Digital Realty remains an innovation leader, integrating cutting-edge technology to facilitate cloud computing and hybrid IT solutions. The company has already achieved 1GW of sustainable IT capacity, with a significant amount of energy consumption across its US and Europe operations coming from renewable sources.
Additionally, Digital Realty data centres are designed to require fewer construction materials while delivering industry-leading Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE). This not only lowers the carbon footprint of its customers, but also their costs.
More than 13 million square feet has been certified under green building standards by Digital Realty.
2. Microsoft Azure
HQ: Washington, US
CEO: Satya Nadella
Revenue: US$261.8bn (Microsoft, 2024)
Globally, Microsoft Azure has more than 200 data centre facilities that are linked together by more than 175,000 miles of fibre optic lines. Numerous companies have utilised Azure in order to expand upon their data centre transformations.
Azure, as a part of Microsoft, has been 100% carbon neutral since 2012, meaning the organisation is removing as much carbon each year as it emits. It aims to operate on 100% renewable energy by 2025, be water positive by 2030, zero waste by 2030 and achieve net zero deforestation from new construction.
1. Amazon Web Services (AWS)
HQ: Washington, US
CEO: Matt Garman
Revenue: US$107.56bn (2024)
Continually ranked as one of the leading data centre companies, AWS continues to develop new and improved strategies to make its data centres and hyperscale facilities more sustainable.
As AWS builds new data centres, the organisation seeks the optimal balance between energy and water use. For one thing, the new data centre components in AWS data centre design are projected to reduce mechanical energy consumption by up to 46%, reduce embodied carbon in the concrete used by 35% and deliver a power usage effectiveness (PUE) rating to 1.08.
In 2023, the company said its data centres had a global PUE of 1.15.
Disclosure: This article was produced in partnership with AVK, provider of prime and standby energy solutions for data centres. The editorial content was independently developed by the Data Centre Magazine team.
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