Counting the cost of carbon in the cloud
Cloud services promised a greener web yet the lack of transparent, accessible data makes that claim hard to measure. We should demand more from service providers, writes Neil Haffenden
It’s easy to feel powerless in the face of a changing climate. We face an uphill battle against carbon emissions, yet it’s often hard or impossible to find the data that might let us make positive changes.
To reduce an organisation’s carbon footprint we first need a baseline to measure against. And on a local level that isn’t so hard to find — just look at the energy bills and do the sums.
But as we’ve noted before, once you factor in cloud-based hosting and applications, that kind of certainty just … evaporates.
This is where I think we can and should hold our service providers to account.
We need to look beyond their environmental claims and demand hard data — comprehensive figures which allow us to dig deeper and consider issues in the round.
If all this sounds daunting, it shouldn’t. Even with today’s scarcity of “cloud carbon” data it’s possible to have a real impact on your carbon footprint without sacrificing other business goals.
In two years, my own organisation has cut the carbon output of its cloud-based online platform by just over two-thirds. I’ll happily share how we did that (and how we measured it) because I think we can only improve the problem of global digital emissions if we all make a sustained effort to do the right things.
But one of the best ways we can do that is by using our purchasing power to demand accurate, actionable data from prospective suppliers.
I’ll return to this theme shortly, but first, let me talk about the measurable progress we have already been able to make.
Our carbon journey
I’m the Platform Delivery Manager at MPB, the largest global platform to buy, sell and trade used photo and video kit. Part of my job has been to set up and develop the carbon and energy plan for our online platform.
Our company exists entirely within the circular economy, extending the life of existing equipment rather than persuading people to buy new.
We aim to promote sustainability in whatever we do, whether that means using only plastic-free packing materials, having a zero gender pay gap, or asking our suppliers and partners to demonstrate their own environmental and diversity credentials. It’s a big part of what we do and who we are.
I know a great many companies talk about their sustainability strategies with varying degrees of credibility, but I genuinely believe we are taking our climate impact seriously.
Tech is only a part of the business’s overall carbon footprint — logistics, warehousing, marketing and many more functions all have their own plans to help us reach net zero. But our platform’s global reach and ever-growing customer traffic can give us significant influence.
What to measure, and how?
Creating an effective carbon strategy might start with one person, but success depends on a shared understanding across the entire team.
Absolutely everyone must be brought onboard, irrespective of their job title. And committing to a common goal means we all need to use the same terminology.
Here are the terms we arrived at, guided by the internationally validated Greenhouse Gas Protocol:
Scope 1: Carbon created directly by burning fossil fuels. For us that typically means using natural gas to power central heating and hot water at our premises.
Scope 2: Carbon created indirectly through electricity use. That might include air conditioning, running computers and peripherals, refrigeration and lighting.
Scope 3: The greenhouse gas emissions of services provided off-site as a direct result of our business. That might include staff commuting and travel, courier services or advertising via third parties, as well as our focus today — cloud hosting, powered by electricity used in remote data centres.
Of course, Scope 3 is also the hardest to measure accurately. Hard, but not impossible.
Cloud carbon: first, the good news
In June 2022 we replatformed, and let’s start with the headline: in the two years since then, the platform’s monthly carbon output has fallen by two-thirds, from over 6 tonnes (equivalent) to 1.7 tonnes (equivalent).
The precise unit of measurement, tCO2e, is defined here. Figures include Google Cloud Platform’s (GCP) Scopes 1, 2 and 3.
Here are some of the ways we achieved this:
1. Choosing the right Cloud partner
Google stood out from its competitors by publishing clear data on the carbon output of its services, and on the amount of carbon-free energy used in its Cloud regions. It aims to reach net zero by 2030 (although that target is at risk following the surge in AI-powered services).
Real-time energy usage data is the only way to make educated infrastructure decisions, and unfortunately, most of Google’s direct competitors don’t have such easily accessible data.
2. Flexibility to move regions
To make the most of this data, you need to have the flexibility to move locations of services and adjust processing times. You may have read in an earlier post, when we moved our environments from London to Belgium, taking advantage of data centres run on low-carbon electricity.
3. Strict scale-downs and switch-offs
We close down our lower environments outside working hours when not required, as well as right-sizing their resource allocation. The data centre can’t tell when we aren’t there and who wants to churn out emissions when no one’s around to use them?
4. Platform efficiencies
Over time we have continuously refined and improved the platform. Among the notable efficiencies were a bespoke image resizing tool and caching optimisation to reduce data transfers.
5. Moving internal software to cloud services
Using SAAS applications such as Tableau Cloud (for analytics) means we benefit from economies of scale, leading to lower total carbon output. And as we look to migrate more of our in-house tools cloudwards, we’d expect this to be more efficient than running our own and this presents opportunities to influence our suppliers to share more of their carbon data — a way we can have influence beyond our direct usage.
Pushing for change in our supply chain
Like most modern web platforms, each action taken on our platform relies on numerous third-party services. This gives us a unique opportunity to make an impact beyond our direct control by influencing these companies’ environmental practices. Encouraging them to track and publish sustainability data allows us — and other customers — to make more informed choices.
We expect our suppliers to demonstrate a genuine commitment to environmental responsibility — not simply as a tick-box exercise but as a shared value. Specifically, we want suppliers to have transparent carbon usage data available, or a clear roadmap when that would become available.
Publishing Impact or ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) reports is also a big plus that we look for, as it shows they are actively tracking and reporting on their environmental impact.
Using our voice and buying power to influence suppliers helps us to use our influence on companies larger than ours that we hope will drive meaningful change within the broader tech industry.
Moving targets
I may have made this all sound simple but the cloud-hosting landscape exists in a state of perpetual change.
For one thing, we couldn’t ignore AI even if we wanted to — its potential and the pace of change are just too great — and that currently means using more energy. Google estimates its AI services drove a 48% increase in emissions at its data centres from 2019 to 2023.
Meanwhile the various GCP regions’ use of low-carbon power is ever-changing, with London now approaching Belgium on some measures.
Even within GCP, carbon output varies between applications. Cloudrun, Notebooks and Kubernetes Engine all have a higher output per pound spent than CloudSQL, Cloud Storage and Networking.
And while we continue to ask our other suppliers for carbon estimates, the calculations will inevitably become more complex as and when they do.
Our platform carbon roadmap
We’ve a way to go to make our online platform carbon-neutral, but there’s plenty more we can do to get there.
We’re already in a position to consider carbon output alongside cost whenever we make purchasing and prioritisation decisions.
We continue to optimise our platform’s use of cloud provision, use Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) autoscaling to reduce resource usage outside business hours, and to close down unused infrastructure.
Meanwhile there are some challenges on the horizon. For one thing — happily — our business continues to grow. While that doesn’t mean our carbon footprint will grow in direct proportion, it does mean we need to continue paying careful attention to resource scaling.
And use of new AI features as they arise means we’ll continually face trade-offs between data use, financial incentives and carbon targets. Even Google doesn’t quite have the simple answer to that yet.
All of the above means our Technology team members need to build and maintain their “sustainable development” skills, particularly at the planning stages of a project. As a business, we need to make sure they have the latest emissions data available to them.
We’re looking at having a Sustainability Representative involved at the earliest stages of product design, and at various aspects of sustainable web design (including training resources such as those provided by the Green Software Foundation).
What difference will it make?
I talked earlier about the impact of lots of people using their influence, large or small, to influence the way cloud software vendors operate. It bears repeating.
Cloud companies certainly want us to believe that economies of scale mean they’re automatically greener. The reality is that there are many cases where the opposite is true, and without transparent data it will always be hard to judge.
I’ve named suppliers who provide this kind of data, but the reality is that most don’t. If that continues, it will be harder for all of us to make a meaningful impact on climate change and that only changes through customers demanding better.
Money is a simple metric that is easy to track and to understand. That doesn’t mean it’s the most important one. Imagine what we could do if carbon emissions were just as accessible and valued.
If you’ve reached this far, I hope it’s because you’re interested in the sort of changes you can make at your own organisation.
And if you can, talk to your suppliers about their greenhouse emissions. The more they hear about it, the more they’ll realise it’s a way to reach more customers.
As for your ideas, these are things we all benefit from sharing. If you try any of the things we did — or want to add your own suggestions — it would be great to hear about them.
In the meantime, I’ll leave you with some links around sustainability and greener computing.
Neil Haffenden is Platform Delivery Manager at MPB, the largest global platform to buy, sell and trade used photo and video gear.
