Climatiq
source

CCF

2513 Factors2513 Factor
75 Regions75 Region
2173 Activities2173 Activity

About CCF

Cloud Carbon Footprint is a free and open-source emissions measurement and analysis tool. It provides emission factors and methodology for measuring the emissions of Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

Visit CCF website
DATASET

Derived from CCF models

PropertyValue
Description
Cloud Carbon Footprint is a free and open-source emissions measurement and analysis tool. It provides emission factors and methodology for measuring the emissions of Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
Source type
Non-profit Organisation
Original dataset URLURL
Year released
2021-2022
Geography
Multiple regions
Sector
Type of data
Activity-based
Emission results
CO2e
Data Transformation
Use-phase emissions are calculated using energy consumption and grid mix emissions intensity. Embodied emissions are calculated using the equation and assumptions provided in the source.

License

PropertyValue
Type of license
Cloud Carbon Footprint is an open-source project, sponsored by Thoughtworks Inc. under the Apache License, Version 2.0
License URLURL

Data quality

PropertyValue
Data quality assurance
Vetted by Climatiq. For further information on data quality assurance, see: https://www.climatiq.io/methodology#Data-Quality
Quality flag(s)
Methodology
The source does not clarify the IPCC AR version of GWPs used to calculate CO2e.

Methodology

PropertyValue
IPCC AR method
  • The source does not specify the IPCC AR version of GWPs used to calculate CO2e.
LCA boundary
  • upstream-end_of_life
  • use_phase
Scope applicability
  • 3.1
Emissions breakdown
  • Total (CO2e)
Methodology description

Use-phase emissions:

Climatiq uses average power usage, Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE), and regional grid mix data from CCF to estimate use-phase emissions for CPU, storage, network, and memory usage across major cloud providers.

Embodied emissions:

Embodied emissions represent the CO₂eq released during the manufacture and disposal of hardware devices. To estimate embodied emissions from cloud usage, Climatiq follows the methodology and assumptions developed by Cloud Carbon Footprint (CCF). CCF calculates the fraction of a device's total embodied emissions that should be allocated to a given workload — for example, if only a subset of a physical server's virtual CPUs (vCPUs) are in use, a proportional share of embodied emissions is assigned to that usage.

Hourly embodied emissions are calculated using the following formula:

Hourly EF (kgCO₂eq/h) = TE × (TR/EL) × (RR/TR)

Where:

TE (kgCO₂eq) — Total Embodied Emissions: the sum of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) emissions for all hardware components. Assumptions are available in the CCF repository and CCF spreadsheet.

TR (hours) — Time Reserved: the length of time the hardware is reserved for use. Here, TR = 1 hour is assumed.

EL (hours) — Expected Lifespan: the anticipated operational lifetime of the equipment. A lifespan of 4 years (35,064 hours) is assumed, following AWS convention, giving a TR/EL ratio of approximately 0.0000285 (i.e. 1/35,064).

RR (instance vCPUs) — Resources Reserved: the number of vCPUs reserved for the workload. Assumptions are available in the CCF repository.

TR (platform total vCPUs) — Total Resources: the total number of vCPUs available on the platform. Assumptions are available in the CCF repository.

Climatiq has published hourly embodied emissions factors derived from this methodology. For full details, see the CCF methodology documentation: https://www.cloudcarbonfootprint.org/docs/methodology/#compute

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