Carbon Neutrality and Green Cloud Computing: Alibaba Cloud’s Role in Reducing Emissions

Thousands of years ago Chinese philosophers proposed ideas like "unity of heaven and man" and "following nature," which are seen as the earliest low‑carbon concepts; today, carbon issues have become inseparable from modern life.

In September 2012 a report on returning farmland to forest established the "National Low‑Carbon Day," and on June 17, 2013 China celebrated its first Low‑Carbon Day. This year the day falls on August 25 with the theme "Low‑carbon life, green building future."

Carbon peak means China will cap CO₂ emissions before 2030 and then gradually reduce them, while carbon neutrality involves measuring an entity’s total greenhouse‑gas output and offsetting it through tree planting, energy‑saving measures, and other actions to achieve net‑zero emissions.

Enterprises are now expected to play a key role in the carbon‑neutral wave, integrating green practices into their operations.

Cloud computing itself is a green technology that boosts overall CPU utilization; by consolidating resources and shifting workloads, cloud data centers use 5‑10 times the energy efficiency of private data halls and can leverage wind and solar power. IDC predicts that continued cloud adoption over the next four years could cut carbon emissions by 1 billion tons, equivalent to offsetting 400 coal‑fire plants or a medium‑sized country's annual emissions.

Immersion liquid‑cooling technology further reduces energy use: servers are submerged in insulating coolant, allowing heat to be directly removed with near‑zero power consumption for cooling. Alibaba Cloud’s five super data centers have adopted this and other green designs, cutting data‑center energy use by over 70% and meeting national green‑data‑center standards.

Market reports estimate that by 2025 China’s liquid‑cooling data‑center market will exceed one trillion yuan, and Alibaba is leading the industry by open‑sourcing standards and scaling commercial deployment.

Alibaba Cloud has also pioneered clean‑energy trading, purchasing renewable electricity to power its data centers, reducing CO₂ emissions by 51 kilotons and achieving the highest clean‑energy usage in China’s internet sector; its Zhangbei and Heyuan centers aim for 100% zero‑carbon energy.

Looking ahead, Alibaba Cloud will continue to support the national "dual‑carbon" strategy by strengthening technological innovation, expanding clean‑energy transactions, and building green digital infrastructure for the future.