Oracle has pledged to power its global operations, both its facilities and its cloud, with 100 percent renewable energy by 2025.

The company had previously made the committent for its cloud facilities, but has extended the pledge to include the rest of its global operations.

“Relying on renewable energy is an important step toward a more sustainable future,” said Oracle Chief Executive Officer Safra Catz. “Oracle will always make its biggest impact on the environment by providing customers with technology that enables them to reduce their carbon footprint, but this new goal reflects the shared values of our customers, partners and investors.”

The company said its European cloud operations were already 100 percent powered by renewables, along with 51 of its offices globally. The company also said it had collected 1250 tons of retired hardware assets, of which 99.6 percent was either reused or recycled. The company said by 2025 it will expect all of its key suppliers to have an environmental program in place.

However, the company seemingly still has a long way to go on the carbon footprint of its data centers. Oracle’s 2020 Clean Cloud report showed that while almost 90 percent of its Latin American facilities sourced green energy, just 16 percent of its US cloud facilities were powered by renewable energy; US West (San Jose) and Canada Southeast (Montreal) were 100 percent renewable-powered while the rest were in the low-teens at best.

Just two of the company’s Middle East & Africa facilities had renewable energy in their mix; Johannesburg at 11 percent and Israel East (Jerusalem) at 3 percent, for a region average that rounds to zero percent. In Asia Pacific the company averaged 13 percent renewable energy across its facilities, mostly through its facilities in India and Australia.

“While Oracle can have its biggest impact on the environment by providing customers with technology that enables them to reduce their carbon footprint, we also have a meaningful role to play in leading the way toward a more sustainable future,” added Jon Chorley, Oracle’s Chief Sustainability Officer. “Powering our operations with 100 percent renewable energy by 2025 is an important step in that direction and a critical component of empowering our customers to run more environmentally friendly businesses.”

In China, this week also saw Baidu announce its operations would become carbon neutral by 2030. For its owned data centers, the Chinese cloud company said it would aim to achieve a PUE of 1.14 through ‘technological innovation practices, enhanced software and hardware integration, integrated artificial intelligence applications and more.’ The company said it would prioritize future data center locations in areas with available renewable power. For leased data centers, Baidu said it will reduce PUE by ‘outsourcing the technology and migrating the computing power requirements' in order to reduce total carbon emissions. The company also said it would utilize carbon offset measures where it can.

Aside from Chindata, most Chinese cloud providers haven't made carbon pledges. Greenpeace recently reported that under 9 percent of Baidu's operations were powered by renewable energy.

This week Vodafone announced the entirety of the telco’s European operations – including mobile and fixed networks, data centers, retail, and offices – will be 100 percent powered by electricity from renewable sources from July 2021.

Last year the company brought forward its aims of purchasing 100% renewable electricity in Europe to 2021 from its previous target of 2025 and aims to achieve the same goal in its African operations by 2025. The company is aiming for net-zero carbon emissions across the whole company by 2030.

“This is a major milestone towards our goal of reducing our own global carbon emissions to net-zero by 2030, helping our customers reduce their own environmental footprint and continuing to build an inclusive and sustainable digital society in all of our markets,” said Vodafone Group CEO Nick Read.