Cloud computing is a significant and growing source of corporate carbon emissions — and for European enterprises, quantifying and reducing that footprint is increasingly a legal requirement, not just a sustainability aspiration. The EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) requires large companies to report on their environmental impact, including Scope 3 emissions from their digital infrastructure and cloud operations. For organizations running SAP workloads on hyperscaler platforms, understanding and optimizing cloud carbon output is now both an ESG priority and a compliance obligation.
Novarto’s Hyperscaler Carbon Footprint Optimization service helps organizations measure the carbon emissions generated by their SAP and enterprise workloads on AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and STACKIT — and then systematically reduce them. This covers identification of the highest-emission areas of your cloud infrastructure, development of a sustainable technology strategy aligned with your ESG commitments, introduction of green software engineering practices that reduce energy consumption at the application level, and ongoing monitoring to track progress against reduction targets.
Reducing cloud carbon footprint and reducing cloud cost are not competing objectives — they are frequently the same action. Over-provisioned resources consume more energy than rightsized ones. Inefficient code runs longer and uses more compute. The optimization work that reduces emissions also reduces the infrastructure bill.
Not sure what your SAP cloud environment is actually emitting — or what your CSRD reporting obligation requires you to measure? [Book a Discovery Call →]
Cloud Carbon Emission Measurement: Before emissions can be reduced, they must be accurately measured. Novarto uses available cloud provider carbon tools — including native dashboards from AWS, Azure, and GCP — alongside third-party carbon intensity frameworks to establish a baseline of your SAP workloads current carbon output, broken down by service, region, and workload type. This baseline forms the foundation for all subsequent optimization work and provides the documented evidence required for CSRD or internal ESG reporting.
Sustainable Cloud Architecture & Green Software Practices: Carbon emission reduction in cloud environments happens at two levels: infrastructure and application. At the infrastructure level, this means selecting lower-carbon cloud regions where renewable energy is used to power data centers, rightsizing compute resources to eliminate wasted energy from over-provisioning, and scheduling non-time-sensitive batch workloads to run during periods of lower grid carbon intensity. At the application level, green software engineering practices — including efficient algorithm design, reduced data transfer, and minimized cold-start operations — directly reduce the energy consumed by SAP applications and custom extensions.
ESG Strategy & Continuous Carbon Monitoring: Novarto develops a sustainable technology roadmap aligned with your organizations ESG targets and reporting requirements, covering both short-term reduction actions and longer-term architectural decisions that reduce your cloud carbon trajectory over time. Ongoing monitoring tracks actual emissions against targets and provides the documented reporting data needed for CSRD compliance, internal sustainability dashboards, or external ESG disclosures.
The Novarto Carbon Optimization Methodology: From Measurement to Continuous Reduction
Our proven methodology ensures a transparent, low-risk, and fast path to understanding and reducing your hyperscaler carbon footprint. We begin with a collaborative Discovery Workshop to thoroughly assess your current cloud usage, sustainability goals, and identify key areas for optimization.
Our approach is built on a Pre-built Foundation and follows a structured Methodology Track:
- Template-based and in sync with former projects: Leveraging our experience and proven frameworks for efficient execution.
- Agile execution to support transparency: Providing clear visibility and iterative progress throughout the optimization process.
- Low risk and fixed price (for the initial phases): Offering predictable costs and minimizing financial uncertainty.
- Fast time to value: Delivering tangible insights and actionable recommendations for reducing your carbon footprint quickly.
The Methodology in a Nutshell:
- INITIATE: We clearly explain our solution offering and the detailed methodology we will employ to optimize your hyperscaler carbon footprint.
- DISCOVER: We collaborate to gather necessary data on your cloud consumption and utilize relevant carbon footprint calculation tools.
- DELIVER: We work in agile two-week sprints, providing analysis of your carbon emissions, identifying priority reduction areas, recommending sustainable technology strategies, and introducing green software best practices.
- CONTINUOUS RUN: We provide a smooth handover to your team or establish ongoing monitoring and recommendations to ensure continuous progress towards your sustainability goals.
FAQ Section:
1. What is hyperscaler carbon footprint optimization, and why does it matter for SAP environments?
Hyperscaler carbon footprint optimization is the process of measuring the greenhouse gas emissions generated by cloud infrastructure and workloads, identifying the highest-impact reduction opportunities, and implementing changes that reduce energy consumption and carbon output without compromising system performance. For SAP environments specifically, this matters because SAP workloads — including SAP Commerce Cloud, SAP S/4HANA, and SAP BTP services — typically represent significant compute and storage consumption on hyperscaler platforms, making them material contributors to an organizations cloud carbon footprint.
As enterprises face increasing pressure to report on and reduce their digital carbon emissions — both from regulatory requirements and from investor and customer expectations — cloud infrastructure has moved from a footnote in sustainability reporting to a central line item. Optimizing SAP cloud carbon output is therefore both an environmental responsibility and a governance requirement for many European organizations.
2. Why does cloud computing generate carbon emissions?
Cloud computing generates carbon emissions because data centers — the physical infrastructure behind hyperscaler platforms — consume large amounts of electricity to power servers, cooling systems, and networking equipment. The carbon intensity of that electricity depends on the energy mix of the grid supplying the data center: data centers powered primarily by renewable energy have significantly lower carbon emissions per unit of compute than those powered by fossil fuels.
Beyond the data center energy mix, the efficiency of the workloads running within the cloud environment also matters. Over-provisioned virtual machines running at low utilization consume energy proportional to their allocated capacity, not their actual usage — meaning inefficient resource allocation directly increases carbon output. Similarly, inefficient application code that runs longer or generates unnecessary data transfers consumes more compute and, therefore, more energy than optimized equivalents. Carbon footprint optimization addresses both the infrastructure layer (where and how resources are provisioned) and the application layer (how efficiently software runs on those resources).
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