A recent Alibaba Cloud report, “Tech-Driven Sustainability Trends and Index 2024,” reveals that 76% of businesses across Asia, Europe, and the Middle East are interested in using digital technologies like AI and cloud for sustainability. However, 61% remain concerned about the significant energy consumption associated with these technologies, posing a barrier to wider adoption. Interest is highest in emerging Asian markets (83%), followed by the Middle East (78%).
Notably, the Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia, and Thailand show particularly strong interest. The Middle East leads in identifying AI and machine learning as crucial for corporate sustainability (52%), followed by Europe (41%). A strong majority (81%) believe human oversight is necessary for developing digital technologies, including AI, with the Middle East expressing the strongest sentiment (91%).
Despite optimism, 59% of businesses, with Asia leading at 63%, admit they lack a full understanding of how digital technology supports sustainability goals. A similar percentage (62%) of executives believe their organizations are falling behind in adopting cloud and AI for this purpose, particularly in Singapore, the Philippines, Japan, and Hong Kong.
While 82% agree that sustainable technology development is crucial, the perceived high energy consumption of digital technologies, especially AI (61% concerned, rising to 85% in Singapore), is a significant worry. In fact, 71% fear AI’s energy use could negate its benefits, with Singapore (86%) again expressing the highest concern. When choosing a “green” cloud provider, businesses prioritize those using renewable energy (51%), energy-efficient data centers (46%), and carbon reduction initiatives (42%).
“With feedback from decision-makers across 13 markets, the survey report sheds light on the current attitudes and challenges businesses face in adopting AI and cloud computing for sustainability,” said Selina Yuan, President of International Business, Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, “At Alibaba Cloud, we are committed to supporting businesses on their sustainability journeys with scalable and sustainable solutions. By pledging to use 100% clean energy by 2030 and improving the energy efficiency at our global data centers, as well as optimizing Generative AI capabilities such as large language models (LLMs) performance, AI can be a powerful tool to improve efficiency and optimize energy consumption.”
Alibaba Cloud has made progress in its green initiatives, improving the PUE of its data centers to 1.200 in fiscal year 2024, with 56% of its electricity coming from clean sources. This resulted in a 44% year-on-year increase, enabling clients to reduce emissions by 9.884 million tons.
Furthermore, Alibaba Cloud promotes accessible AI through its open-source releases of the Qwen family of large language models, including Qwen2.5-VL and Qwen2.5-1M, and the video foundation model Tongyi Wanxiang. These models have fostered a collaborative ecosystem with over 10,000 derivative models on Hugging Face and aim to lower the cost and energy consumption of AI development by emphasizing smaller parameter models.
The “Tech-Driven Sustainability Trends and Index 2024” report surveyed 1,300 decision-makers in 13 markets to understand the evolving landscape of corporate sustainability. It emphasizes the crucial role of technology in driving change and the need for businesses to responsibly adopt AI and cloud computing while addressing energy consumption and knowledge gaps in their sustainability efforts.
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