With more companies switching to cloud service providers, we are seeing a drastic increase in the amount of electricity required to run the data centers that are hosting all the machines required to run these platforms. Currently, data centers produce 3% of global carbon emissions, which is roughly 1.5% of the worldwide electricity demand.

In 2022, Ofcom, a UK regulator, began its market study into the cloud industry to investigate the dominance that hyperscalers, especially AWS and Microsoft, hold over the industry and the limits this creates for customers. This investigation follows concerns surrounding customers feeling “locked in” to a single provider, potentially leading to inflated prices in the market¹.