Every time your team sends an email, stores a file in the cloud, runs a video call, or uses an AI tool, energy is consumed - most of it in data centres owned by large technology companies. For many office-based businesses, digital services are quietly becoming one of the more significant sources of Scope 3 emissions in their footprint, even if they rarely appear on an energy bill.

This guide explains how to reduce emissions from your use of cloud storage, software-as-a-service (SaaS) tools, data hosting, and AI services. Unlike physical equipment, these are the digital services your business subscribes to and uses every day.

How this helps your business

Reduces wasted spending: Many businesses pay for cloud storage, SaaS subscriptions, and data services they are not using at capacity, or actively using at all. Auditing and rationalising your digital tools may uncover meaningful cost savings alongside emissions reductions.
Boosts supplier accountability: With global data centre electricity consumption climbing – especially due to the expansion of AI – proactively engaging with software and cloud providers about their energy sources and sustainability commitments supports supply chain reporting requirements, strengthens your carbon footprint data and signals a desire for sustainable practices to the wider market.
Builds responsible digital habits: AI tools are powerful, but they carry a significant energy cost. Establishing clear expectations around their use early makes it much easier to manage this as adoption grows.

Is this right for you?

This guide is relevant to most businesses that use digital tools, cloud platforms, or AI services. It will have the biggest impact if you:

Use cloud-based storage, productivity tools, or software subscriptions (e.g. Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox, Slack, Salesforce).
Host a website, run an online store/service, or store customer or business data with a hosting provider.
Use or are starting to use AI tools such as ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, or similar services.
Have a large volume of stored data, files, or emails that have accumulated over time.

It will have less immediate impact if your business is very small, uses minimal digital infrastructure, or already works with providers who run on 100% renewable energy.

Even so, the habits and questions in this guide are worth building into your procurement practices early.

How to reduce your emissions from data, cloud and AI services

✅ Audit your digital tools and stored data

Many businesses have excess digital clutter - obsolete files, duplicate data, unused subscriptions, and neglected cloud storage - all quietly using energy. A one-off audit is a worthwhile starting point. Ask:

Which cloud storage services and SaaS platforms does your business subscribe to, and are all of them actively used?
Are there duplicate tools doing the same job (e.g. multiple video conferencing platforms or storage services)?
How much data are you storing, and how much of it is genuinely needed? Redundant backups, large email attachments, and old project files all take up space on energy-consuming servers.
Are there data retention policies in place, or does data accumulate indefinitely by default?

Consider using tools such as: Microsoft 365's built-in storage analytics, Google Workspace's storage management dashboard, and Dropbox's file activity tracker to identify redundant files and unused data.

For email decluttering, utilities like Clean Email or Mailstrom can help manage large volumes of messages efficiently.

Deleting what you don't need, consolidating to fewer platforms, and cancelling unused subscriptions will reduce both your digital emissions and your monthly costs.

✅ Choose providers powered by renewable energy

The single biggest driver of emissions from cloud and data services is the source of electricity used to power data centres. The major cloud providers - including Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and Amazon Web Services - have made commitments to renewable energy and publish sustainability reports, however, their progress and practices can differ, so it’s important to scrutinise reports and look for independent analysis.

Some (often smaller) hosting providers actively promote their environmental credentials and pride themselves on operating sustainably. For business with significant cloud overheads, selecting a provider with an evidence-based track record in sustainability can have a meaningful impact on your carbon footprint.

There are third-party organisations (e.g. The Green Web Foundation), who publish searchable databases and rankings of hosting and cloud services according to their use of renewables and environmental initiatives.

When choosing or renewing contracts with cloud, hosting, or SaaS providers, check:

Do they publish a sustainability report or carbon emissions data?
Do they use or purchase renewable energy to power their data centres?
Have they set science-based targets or committed to net zero?

If a provider cannot answer basic questions about their energy sources, that is itself useful information when comparing options.

✅ Use cloud services efficiently

A few practical habits can reduce the energy footprint of your day-to-day digital activity:

Switch off or scale down: Cloud resources that are provisioned but idle still consume energy. If your business manages its own cloud infrastructure (e.g. virtual machines or servers), make sure they are switched off or scaled down when not in use.
Choose the right data centre region: If you have a choice of where your cloud services are hosted, opt for regions with cleaner electricity grids. Some cloud providers' dashboards show the carbon intensity of different regions in real time.
Stream and transfer less: Lowering the amount of data being transferred/streamed saves energy.
Tidy your inbox and shared drives: Emails with large attachments stored across thousands of inboxes, and shared drives full of outdated files, consume server storage unnecessarily. Encourage staff to delete what they no longer need and use shared links rather than attaching files to emails where possible.

✅ Use AI tools responsibly

AI tools are increasingly useful for business productivity, but they carry an energy cost that is much higher than most people realise. Running a single query through a large AI model can use significantly more energy than a standard web search, and this adds up at scale.

Practical steps to reduce the emissions footprint of AI use:

Be intentional about when you use AI: Use AI tools for tasks where they add genuine value, rather than defaulting to them for every query. A quick web search or looking something up in your existing documents uses a fraction of the energy of prompting a large language model.
Write efficient prompts: Clear, specific prompts typically produce better results in fewer attempts, reducing the back-and-forth that multiplies energy use. Encourage your team to think about what they're asking before prompting.
Choose providers with sustainability credentials: When selecting AI tools for your business, ask whether the provider publishes information about the energy use and carbon footprint of their models. Some AI providers are more transparent than others - and the market is beginning to differentiate on this.
Avoid training custom models unless necessary: Training a custom AI model is extremely energy intensive. For most SMEs, using an existing model through an API or interface is far more efficient than building or fine-tuning your own.

Note: The energy cost of AI is an evolving area. Model efficiency is improving rapidly, and some providers are working to run their infrastructure on renewable energy. However, overall AI energy consumption is growing faster than efficiency gains, so thoughtful usage remains important.

✅Engage your team

Digital emissions are largely invisible, which makes them easy to overlook. A short conversation with your team about why this matters can make a real difference. Consider:

Sharing this guide with your team.
Including digital sustainability in any broader sustainability communications or campaigns you run internally.
Nominating someone to keep an eye on your cloud storage usage and flag when it is growing faster than expected.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

❌ Assuming the cloud is automatically green: Moving to the cloud can reduce emissions compared to running your own servers, but only if the cloud provider uses low-carbon energy. A cloud service powered by a coal-heavy grid can be worse than a well-managed on-premises server. Always check your provider’s energy sources.

❌ Treating AI as emissions-neutral: AI tools are often presented purely as productivity tools, with their energy costs invisible to the user. A single complex AI query can use as much energy as boiling a kettle. This doesn’t mean avoiding AI, but it does mean building intentional usage into your team’s culture before habits become entrenched.

❌ Storing everything indefinitely: Many businesses default to keeping all data ‘just in case’. This creates large volumes of stored data that consume energy continuously. A simple data retention policy is one of the easiest ways to reduce your digital footprint over time.

Cost and Effort

Cost: Low to moderate

Most actions involve no additional spend - they are about using existing tools more deliberately, setting up your systems efficiently, and asking better questions of your suppliers. Where switching providers is involved, costs depend on your current contracts and usage.

Effort: Low to medium

Initial setup: 2–4 hours to audit your digital tools, check provider sustainability credentials, and adjust key settings.
Ongoing: mostly about embedding good habits around cloud and AI usage in your team.

Conclusion

Emissions from data, cloud, and AI services are a growing part of many small businesses’ carbon footprint. The good news is that the most impactful actions are largely about habits and choices rather than significant investment. Auditing and rationalising your digital tools, choosing providers that run on clean energy, using cloud infrastructure efficiently, and building intentional AI usage into your team’s culture are all useful interventions.