Scaling with Purpose: Akamai’s Pursuit of ISO 50001 for Energy Management

If you’ve been following Akamai’s sustainability journey, you know that the ISO 14001 framework has been the backbone of our environmental management system (EMS) for the last few years. We have established ISO 14001–aligned environmental governance, measurement, and management processes internally, which have been audited and applauded by our external assurance provider.

As we pursue ISO 50001, we are building upon these foundational elements to build an integrated management system.

This evolution is impact-driven. Electricity consumption remains our most significant environmental aspect, and our EMS is already targeted on power use. However, as we look to the future, we recognize the need to deepen focus on power optimization. By adopting ISO 50001, we are choosing to introduce a new layer of structure and rigor to our energy efficiency program. 

Much like ISO 14001, implementing this new framework is a complex, multistep process. To develop our energy management system, our efforts will include:

• Establishing a dedicated energy management team to lead cross-organizational alignment and accountability.

• Expanding leadership oversight to help embed energy governance into core business strategy.

• Defining energy baselines and performance metrics to track measurable efficiency gains over time.

• Refining our data and telemetry tracking systems to deliver granular, real-time power insights across our network.

• Partnering with hardware, software, and operations teams to embed efficiency directly into our technology architecture.

• Defining clear roles and expectations so every team understands how their work impacts energy performance.

Demonstrating measurable energy efficiency improvement is a core requirement for ISO 50001 certification and recertification. And having precise measurements is critical to identify opportunities, make informed decisions, and accurately measure performance.

To meet the ISO 50001 requirement and drive measurable impact, we use our internal power database, which pulls metered readings from devices across our global network at five-minute intervals. This highly granular telemetry moves us away from broad, lagging estimates and gives us real-time visibility into our energy trends, hotspots, and the direct impacts of our decisions, enabling data-driven efficiency-focused interventions across our network.

As our business adapts to the new era of Akamai Inference Cloud and advanced compute services, our energy demand will inevitably increase. We are scaling our sustainability program in tandem with this growth by ensuring that we have a holistic, credible, and effective energy management framework.

We continue to be committed to aligning our electricity consumption with renewable energy coverage, but true responsibility means going beyond how we source our power. It means maximizing the efficiency of every watt we use and eliminating any energy waste. 

In pursuit of this goal, we continually identify and evaluate software, hardware, and network deployment efficiency opportunities. Our ISO 50001–aligned energy management system will enable us to put more of these opportunities into action.

The adoption of ISO 50001 is far from a compliance exercise for us. It is a strategic internal amplification of energy efficiency across the very fabric of our business.

Stay tuned for more updates and impacts from our energy management system development journey.

To learn more about our current environmental management system, please visit our sustainability microsite.