Ask HN: How can I calculate CO2 emission of servers/VPS? I’m trying to make a co2 balance sheet of our organisation. I can’t find good information on how to calculate server emissions in cloud providers (we are using mostly hetzner vps). I’m curious if somebody has some findings/benchmarks or some kind of formula to have an approximation. |
If you really care, put a watt meter on it and try to reduce its power consumption.
Because you don't have control of the data center's grid connections.
Good luck.
You also don't know the exact mix of sources generating the particular amount of power consumed by your data centers instantaneously. Since each generation source has it's own (complicated) emissions profile, the amount generated by different sources is necessary to compute your CO(2) impact.
A power grid can calculate it's CO2 impact of generation more easily because they only need to use emissions measurements or emissions models for the total generation plant. Most places serious about air quality opt for sensors, but CO2 isn't their most pressing measurement. Typically NO2, NO3, CO, and unburned hydrocarbons are more regulated.
If you want to make an impact to GHG, setting aside quantifying the impact, switch to a renewables-backed power supply and increase your efficiency.
But as to calculate exactly the amount of carbon footprint for your VPS, I think you are out of luck, because exact numbers are either opaque or required you take AWS at their word.
If you use AWS you can see the stats on the billing / usage dashboard.
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-customer-carbon-footpri...
Because the second can be estimated via electrical use. But the first involves the building of the machines etc.
https://engineering.teads.com/sustainability/carbon-footprin...
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/awsaccountbilling/latest/aboutv2...
My guess is these will get within an order of magnitude.
150 kgC02/MBtu * 4E-5 MBtu/ft2 = 0.006 kgC02/ft2
To estimate server carbon emission rate, you just have to swap the building energy use intensity for server energy use, and everything else should be the same.
[1] Grid Emission Rate Sources EPA: https://www.epa.gov/egrid/data-explorer WattTime: https://www.watttime.org/
https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/cirrus-nexus-laun...
> "The tool takes in data on carbon intensity from local utility grids, and relates that with the reported strategies of cloud providers. It also calculates energy usage based on the manufacturers' data for the servers involved and PUE from the data center operators."
See also:
https://techxplore.com/news/2022-08-centers-fueling-climate-...
Getting accurate measurements (i.e. say +/- 10%) looks rather difficult, as regional grids vary their energy sources seasonally and even daily, due to things like wind/solar variability, hydropower output, coal vs. gas input, etc.
Scope 1: the fuels you burn on site to generate heat/cooling or electricity.
Scope 2: the electricity you import on site probably burns carbon so it has a carbon factor you can find that on your utilities website (most likely). Imported electricity in kWh x carbon factor tCO2e/(delivered)kWh = emissions in tCO2e - you may want to start here with the location, grid electricity and expected electricity use.
Scope 3: are the emissions made off site to make materials that are imported on site to make the business run.
There are no hard rules to do this analysis. Most of it is a linear approximation. Most people don’t publish analysis beyond scope 1/2.
It’s really important to list assumptions and sources. Good luck.
You might be interested in their methodology page https://cloudcarbonfootprint.org/docs/methodology/
Full disclosure: My company was one of the early testers of the app
There are a couple resources linked here: https://github.com/hashicorp/nomad/blob/h-carbon-meta/CARBON...
The silver lining is that the folks who are working in this space are extremely friendly and passionate in my experience. Don’t be scared to “contact sales for an API key.” The few folks I talked to were extremely helpful.
Still might fit OP's use case, but it's very frustrating to me that the big cloud's seem to have this data but not make it available for realtime use.
For AWS, there is also Customer Carbon Footprint tool available https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2022/03/aws-launc...
as well as icons that nudge you if you work through the console
Call it a PR thing, but it certainly helps in some cases.
That seems to cover on-prem servers and AWS.
https://boavizta.org/en/blog/boavizta-api-automated-evaluati...
- the electricity consumption of the system, which varies depending on use
- the electricity consumption of the air conditioning, which is to a first approximation about the same as the fist number (you've got to remove all that energy again, at some efficiency coefficient). Varies by ambient temperature.
- the CO2 mix of the grid at that time, which varies from minute to minute.