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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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.


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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
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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)
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9. GREEN WEB FOUNDATION
Regulatory requirements
Reporting for
publicly listed
companies
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10. GREEN WEB FOUNDATION
What should be reported?
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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
HubsMozilla’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.

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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

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Network Data Center Device
System segments

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Frontend
(Device)

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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
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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
[email protected]

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.


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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
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42. GREEN WEB FOUNDATION
Build open
source tools,
APIs, and
libraries
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43. GREEN WEB FOUNDATION 42
Create
prototypes.

Contribute to
open source
projects.

Publish open
data.

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Collaborate
with research
institutions

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Talks.
Workshops.
Training.
Consulting.

46. GREEN WEB FOUNDATION
Fellowships.

Branch
Magazine.

Collaborate
with other
aligned orgs.

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