Apidays Singapore 2024 - The Nuance of Quantifying Digital Carbon Emissions by Fershad Irani, GWF Contributor

The Nuance of Quantifying Digital Carbon Emissions
Fershad Irani GWF Contributor | Website Sustainability Consultant - Green Web Foundation

Apidays Singapore 2024: Connecting Customers, Business and Technology (April 17 & 18, 2024)

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Transcript

1. GREEN WEB FOUNDATION The Nuance of Quantifying Digital Carbon Emissions Green I/O Conference, Singapore - 18 April, 2024 Fershad Irani, Green Web Foundation
3. GREEN WEB FOUNDATION A little about Fershad Irani • Australian, living in Taiwan for 11 years. • Maintainer of the CO2.js JavaScript library. • Creator of the Are my third parties green? testing tool. • Developer & consultant, Green Web Foundation
4. GREEN WEB FOUNDATION The Green Web Foundation is a non-profit working towards a fossil free internet by 2030. We use open source, open data, and open culture to help get there faster. 3
5. GREEN WEB FOUNDATION Since day 1
6. GREEN WEB FOUNDATION Emerging reporting requirements Examples. What do they cover? Estimating versus measuring What’s the difference? Why does it matter? Options at each part of the tech stack Frontend, Networks, Backend In the next little while 5
7. GREEN WEB FOUNDATION Laws & Regulations
8. GREEN WEB FOUNDATION Government mandated regulations Many other countries looking to legislate reporting Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) Climate Corporate Data Accountability Act (CCDAA) 7
9. GREEN WEB FOUNDATION Regulatory requirements Reporting for publicly listed companies 8
10. GREEN WEB FOUNDATION What should be reported? 9 China Securities Regulatory Commission
11. GREEN WEB FOUNDATION What should be reported? 10 US Securities and Exchange Commission
12. GREEN WEB FOUNDATION The impact of Scope 3 - Google 75% of Google’s emissions attributed to Scope 3 • Category 1: Purchased goods and services • Category 2: Capital goods • Category 4: Upstream transportation and distribution • Category 6: Business travel • Category 7: Employee commuting, incl. teleworking • Category 11: Use of sold products • Category 12: End-of-life treatment of sold products Google 2023 Environmental Report
13. GREEN WEB FOUNDATION The impact of Scope 3 - Google 75% of Google’s emissions attributed to Scope 3 • Category 1: Purchased goods and services • Category 2: Capital goods • Category 4: Upstream transportation and distribution • Category 6: Business travel • Category 7: Employee commuting, incl. teleworking • Category 11: Use of sold products • Category 12: End-of-life treatment of sold products Google 2023 Environmental Report
14. GREEN WEB FOUNDATION The impact of Scope 3 - Mozilla 98% of Mozilla’s emissions attributed to Scope 3 • Business travel • Employee commuting incl. teleworking • Purchased goods and services • Events • Waste • Upstream transportation & distribution • Use of products Mozilla’s Greenhouse Gas emissions baseline
15. GREEN WEB FOUNDATION The impact of Scope 3 - Mozilla 98% of Mozilla’s emissions attributed to Scope 3 • Business travel • Employee commuting incl. teleworking • Purchased goods and services • Events • Waste • Upstream transportation & distribution • Use of products ◦ Includes Firefox Desktop, Firefox Mobile, Pocket, Mozilla Hubs Mozilla’s Greenhouse Gas emissions baseline
16. GREEN WEB FOUNDATION Semantics
17. GREEN WEB FOUNDATION Defining what you do Estimating Measuring
18. GREEN WEB FOUNDATION Defining what you do Estimating • Imperfect • Relies on models • Often contains assumptions, uses average figures etc. • Easier to get started with
19. GREEN WEB FOUNDATION Trade offs Speed v. accuracy
20. “ GEORGE BOX Empirical Model-Building and Response Surfaces, 1987 All models are wrong, some models are useful. 19
21. GREEN WEB FOUNDATION Defining what you do Measuring • Exact • Often requires more tooling, setup, and knowledge • Might require multiple steps to reach a “carbon figure” • Steeper barrier to get started
22. GREEN WEB FOUNDATION Going through the stack
23. GREEN WEB FOUNDATION Network Data Center Device System segments
24. GREEN WEB FOUNDATION Frontend (Device)
26. GREEN WEB FOUNDATION Frontend: Estimating • Uses the Sustainable Web Design estimation model • Estimates for all three segments • Uses data transfer as a key input to estimate all segments • Includes assumptions about data caching & website visitors. • Can swap in measured figures for a segment if you have them.
27. GREEN WEB FOUNDATION Frontend: Estimating DIMPACT GreenFrame Scope3 • All three segments • Digital media & entertainment • Device segment only • Limited to websites/apps • All three segments • For digital advertising
28. GREEN WEB FOUNDATION 27 Frontend: Measuring Measure a web page’s energy consumption & emissions using Firefox Profiler.
29. GREEN WEB FOUNDATION Network
30. GREEN WEB FOUNDATION Network: Estimation approaches Data Transfer Duration & Bandwidth • Predictive • Bottom up • For fixed networks, assumptions need to be made about the number of users/devices on the network. • Attributive • Top down • Widely used, but also heavily debated in research circles.
31. GREEN WEB FOUNDATION Data Center
32. GREEN WEB FOUNDATION Information from providers Amazon Google Microsoft 31
33. GREEN WEB FOUNDATION • Cloud Carbon Footprint • Open source, public methodology • Works with: ◦ AWS, Google, Azure ◦ AliCloud • Could be extended to other providers Data Center: Estimating
34. GREEN WEB FOUNDATION • OpenCost • Open source, CNCF project • Originally built for Kubernetes cloud native monitoring • Recently announced collaboration with Cloud Carbon Footprint Data Center: Estimating
35. GREEN WEB FOUNDATION Data Center: Measuring • Scaphandre • Open source • Works on: ◦ Bare metal hosts ◦ Certain virtual machines ◦ Kubernetes • Measures power/energy consumption
36. GREEN WEB FOUNDATION 35 If these ideas interest you … Talks. Workshops. Training. Consulting.
37. GREEN WEB FOUNDATION Connect Green Web Foundation thegreenwebfoundation.org Fershad Irani fershad.com
38. GREENWEBFOUNDATION.ORG Thank you fershad@thegreenwebfoundation.org
39. GREEN WEB FOUNDATION About the Green Web Foundation
40. GREEN WEB FOUNDATION “ The Green Web Foundation is working towards a fossil-free internet by 2030. 39
41. GREEN WEB FOUNDATION What we do Fellowships and Thought Leadership Green Web Studio and Training Data Platform and Partnerships Measure the greening of the web with open data Partner to build services using open green web data Advance the state of the art through prototypes Train web professionals to green their stack Support emerging leaders 40
42. GREEN WEB FOUNDATION Build open source tools, APIs, and libraries 41
43. GREEN WEB FOUNDATION 42 Create prototypes. Contribute to open source projects. Publish open data.
44. GREEN WEB FOUNDATION 43 Collaborate with research institutions
45. GREEN WEB FOUNDATION 44 Talks. Workshops. Training. Consulting.
46. GREEN WEB FOUNDATION Fellowships. Branch Magazine. Collaborate with other aligned orgs. 45