Alibaba Group and Tencent topped Greenpeace East Asia’s latest renewable energy scorecard for China’s tech industry. The report, titled Clean Cloud 2024, highlights a substantial gap in climate action among major Chinese tech companies, with some showing limited progress toward their renewable energy goals.
The report analyses ten of China’s leading cloud service companies and 15 leading data centre operators. It found that over the past two years, renewable energy procurement by top Chinese tech companies has increased markedly and as of June 2024, five companies reported annual renewable energy ratios exceeding 10%, compared to just one company in Greenpeace’s June 2022 ranking.
Alibaba Group took the top spot for the first time in four years, purchasing 1.61 billion kWh of renewable energy since the start of the year, the highest volume reported by any company in the cloud provider category.
As per the report, Baidu continues to lag in renewable energy procurement, reporting a renewable energy ratio of approximately 5% in 2023. This is significantly lower than Alibaba Group’s 15.4% and Tencent’s 12.4% in FY2023.
GDS received the highest score among data centre operators, reporting a renewable energy ratio of over 38% in 2023. In contrast, VNET Group, which operates data centres for Microsoft 365, reported a renewable energy ratio of approximately 4% in the same year.
The report highlighted that eight out of the 25 companies in the ranking have committed to achieving 100% renewable energy by 2030. Among these, ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, stands out as the only company that has not disclosed data about its carbon emissions or energy usage.
Greenpeace East Asia climate and energy campaigner Xin Lyu said, “AI is driving a surge in tech sector emissions, and pressure is growing for leading tech companies to reduce their climate impact. China’s tech giants appear to be taking note, and over the past two years, some top companies have reported significant breakthroughs in their renewable energy consumption. However, advancements have been uneven across the industry, and companies such as Baidu have made less progress toward meeting their own climate goals compared to their peers.”
Greenpeace suggested that to maximise their real-world climate impact, companies should achieve carbon neutrality primarily through direct emissions reductions, including purchasing renewable energy and improving energy efficiency, rather than relying on carbon offsets.
“The trend toward decarbonisation of China’s tech industry is unstoppable, but some companies are lagging. In particular, Baidu must ramp up renewable energy consumption to meet its own climate goals. Likewise, ByteDance needs to disclose its environmental data as a first step toward achieving its climate commitments,” Lyu said.