Amazon wants to reduce its carbon footprint by no longer running emergency generators on diesel. The cloud giant therefore relies on hydrogenated vegetable oil (HVO).

The data centers in Ireland and Sweden will be the first to switch from polluting fossil fuel to the greener alternative. The move is part of Amazon’s strategy to reduce the carbon footprint of its data centers, according to The Register. The cloud division AWS already started to switch to HVO in January. According to Amazon, greenhouse gas emissions could be reduced by 90 percent over the fuel’s entire cycle.

vegetable oils

HVO (Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil) is a biofuel derived from the processing of vegetable oils such as cooking oil. The treatment process involves reacting these oils with hydrogen at high temperature and pressure. Precisely because it comes from used oils, HVO is considered a renewable diesel. Processing is an energy-intensive process, but Amazon claims that switching from regular diesel to HVO significantly reduces emissions.

The vegetable oils have other advantages over other biodiesel. For example, the emergency power generators do not need to be adjusted and the fuel remains stable even in extremely cold temperatures. These positive qualities mean that Amazon does not need to make any operational changes and can deploy HVO in different regions and under different weather conditions.

improving sustainability

“Moving to HVO is just one of the ways Amazon is trying to improve data center sustainability,” said Neil Morris, AWS director for Northern Europe. “By making this commitment and using sustainable HVO in our data center locations, we hope to pave the way for other companies and help build a global supply chain that will accelerate change across Europe.”

According to The Register, this supply chain can be important to ensure that the use of HVO actually reduces CO2 emissions and does not unintentionally cause other harm. For example, Swedish transport company Einride claimed that half of the HVO used in the country is palm oil. This discourages suppliers from disclosing where this oil comes from.

deforestation

Using land to grow fuel instead of food can also lead to deforestation. This in turn can lead to an increase in carbon dioxide emissions. However, AWS claims to invest in purchasing HVO that is only from renewable sources and made from traceable raw materials. In pursuit of a net-neutral enterprise by 2040, Amazon will systematically expand the use of HVO to all data centers in Europe.

In addition to Amazon, other major players are also removing diesel from their data centers. Last year, Google presented a test setup of a backup battery system for one of its data centers in Belgium. Microsoft has also successfully researched fuel cells with an output of 3 MW. The tech giant plans to install a similar unit at a research data center to test the feasibility.