How accounting software company Xero uses Climatiq to track and reduce IT emissions

TL;DR:

• Use case: a development team at Xero implemented an internal carbon tracking tool to surface emission insights across teams, with the goal to identify hotspots and make reductions
• The challenge: the solution needed to integrate into their current tech stack, simultaneously providing granular emissions data while minimizing development workload and maintenance
• The solution: Climatiq’s API integrates directly into their existing systems, recycling AWS usage data into carbon data while reducing development time and necessary resources 
• The results: the new solution is already driving carbon reductions—one team identified and removed software that was contributing to 80% of one of their tool's emissions

‍

The challenge: Building an internal carbon monitoring tool that turns usage data into granular carbon impact data 

For large software companies such as Xero, the carbon footprint of computing activities is a hotspot it pays to address. According to Annie Freeman, software engineer at Xero and active green software advocate, “so many people are still unaware of the carbon impact that software has. Having the data is a really key part of that.” That is why she set out to build Footprint, an internal carbon monitoring tool, to understand and mitigate Xero’s computing emissions.

With around 4,600 employees spread across different countries, Xero’s IT systems are relatively complex, with a web of interconnected systems and aspects unique to each team. On top of the operational complexity, there were additional challenges to consider when building a solution:

• Provide granular data: Annie had looked at AWS’ carbon footprint tool but found that Xero’s relatively niche use case necessitated more granular data.
• Fit current structure: Rather than adding more siloes to its complex systems, Xero wanted a tool that would aggregate operational data from various sources and apply carbon insights consistently across the board.
• Ease the burden of building: Annie and the implementation team needed a solution that wouldn’t require manual emission data sourcing and calculations, thus allowing them to build the tool quickly and efficiently while maintaining high quality and accuracy.

When evaluating options, Annie explains, “it all came back to having quality data. We wanted to be able to prioritize that and make sure we were able to do everything correctly.” Annie spoke with others in the green software space, whereby Climatiq came strongly recommended to her. “Climatiq seemed to provide the best option with the most easy-to-use data,” she says, and therefore became the backbone of Footprint.

‍

The solution: Climatiq’s reliable data forms the building blocks of Footprint and plugs directly into Xero’s infrastructure

With a resource-conscious mindset and their challenges in mind, Annie found Climatiq was the best solution because it:

• Provides the most comprehensive dataset of emissions factors to cover all of Xero’s computing activities.
• Turns usage data from AWS into reliable and accurate carbon insights which are then surfaced in daily workflows.
• Is an API-based solution that plugs directly into internal systems, reducing development and maintenance overhead.

Annie and her engineering colleague, Adrea Snow, started building the internal carbon measurement tool during a company hackathon. The tool collates AWS billing data from Xero’s finops team and sends it to Climatiq’s API, which then returns emissions estimates for the computing activities. Footprint surfaces this data in an app where users can input their team name to see the carbon footprint of their owned components for the past month. A team’s components could be anything from a codebase, microservice, monolith, shared resource, or infrastructure. The data is displayed visually with total emissions, a pie chart breakdown of resources, bar chart of historical data, and equivalent emissions data, such as “how many kilometers driven by car” would produce the same amount of emissions. This provides teams with trustworthy data to support carbon-conscious decision-making.

According to Annie, “measurement is the first step in making a culture change to integrating green software practices in a company. The data needs to be visible so people can talk about it and see what they are improving.”

‍

‍

The results: Carbon metrics are embedded in daily practices, enabling transparency and significant emissions reductions 

With the use of Footprint, teams at Xero are able to understand their emissions better and pinpoint hotspots. For example, when Adrea looked at her team’s footprint, she identified an opportunity to cut a tool responsible for ~80% of one component’s emissions. The team decided to deploy to Kubernetes instead, improving efficiency and reducing emissions.

For Annie, such examples prove that an emissions-conscious culture is starting to take root at Xero. She has become a strong advocate of using carbon as a KPI at Xero and supports other teams in surfacing and integrating carbon data in their daily practices. She found that “people have become excited to start thinking a bit deeper about how they can improve their footprint.” Colleagues have started to add carbon emissions alongside cost when considering deprecating features. “It’s becoming more normal in our working lives.” 

For the future, the Footprint team envisions continuing to make the data more useful to engineers, running an internal competition across engineering to reduce emissions, and starting sustainability-focused hackathons. The goal is for Footprint to reach widespread adoption across the company in 2025.

‍