Working with IBM Cloud's carbon calculator

Before you begin

Account owners, account administrators, and users with a viewer role or higher on the billing service can view and export emissions data for the entire account. An account or billing administrator role is required to grant other users access to the Billing service. For more information about assigning access, see Assigning access to account management services.

IBM Cloud and sustainability

As organizations and users work together to achieve better outcomes for their business and for the environment, digital technologies are a growing source of GHG emissions. There are four areas that are the main source for GHG emissions: data centers, big data analytics, security, and internet usage. For more information about sustainability, see IT sustainability beyond the data center.

One use case strategy for sustainability involves ESG reporting, which uses environmental, social, and governance reporting to integrate data silos. For more information, explore IBM Envizi.

IBM Cloud carbon calculator methodology

IBM Cloud plays a critical role for achieving IBM’s energy conservation, renewable electricity procurement, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction targets. IBM Cloud is improving the estimation approach by introducing the carbon calculator, which gives you a detailed view of your cloud electricity consumption and associated GHG emissions.

IBM Cloud's carbon calculator uses data from electricity consumption, server resource utilization measurements, server and process life-cycle events, and service usage data. Based on the data, it estimates the electricity consumption and GHG emission from each account and service offering, according to the location, time period, and resource groups.

IBM Cloud has a resilient global network of locations to host data center workloads and provides three tiers of regions: multizone regions, single-campus multizone regions, and data centers.

The calculation method depends on the gross electricity consumption and GHG emissions factor per location. It allocates a portion of the electricity consumption to each one of the services in a location based on the physical hosts that are being used. Then, it splits the electricity consumption per service, per location, across the tenants that are using the service based on their respective usage metrics. For Classic Infrastructure services, energy consumption is calculated by using the average power consumption for the machine on which the server is running.

Due to the large number of flexible profiles associated with Bare Metal for Classic, profiles were onboarded in phases. Complete data is available from December 2023 on. Users that require a complete emissions report for previous months can submit a support case to request a manual calculation. When creating a support case, select the Billing and usage topic. For more information, see Creating support cases.

The method uses the service units of individual IBM Cloud offerings to allocate electricity consumption of shared resources to a service's individual resources. The per-account electricity consumption is multiplied by the location’s Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) and GHG emission factor to yield the accounts carbon footprint.

The goal of the calculation method is to associate electricity consumption and carbon footprint allocation for the following:

• Per client account
• Per client account and cloud service used
• Per client account, cloud service, and location where the service is running
• Per client account and Resource Group

For a more in depth explanation about carbon calculators methodology and calculations, see Energy and carbon quantification methodology.

Tracking account emissions with carbon calculator

To view emissions data for your account, you must be assigned the viewer or higher role on the billing service to view and export the emissions data for the entire account. An account or billing administrator role is required to grant other users access to the Billing service. For more information about assigning access, see Assigning access to account management services.

Emissions from key greenhouse gases are measured in metric tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent (kgCO₂e). You can view your account's emissions data in the IBM Cloud console. Go to Manage > Billing and Usage > Carbon Calculator to view the following widgets:

• Total emissions: The total emissions are calculated by comparing the energy-related usage with data center energy sources. You can download the total emissions data in CSV format.

• Emissions by location: The energy consumption is calculated by using usage units such as CPU. Two or more resources are required to display the location data. The size represents how much energy is generated and the color represents the carbon intensity that is the emission rate for grams of carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions that are released per unit of energy produced.

• Emissions by service: The GHG emissions are broken down by service.

• Emissions by resource group: The GHG emissions are broken down by group. Most services are displayed by resource group. However, Classic Infrastructure is displayed in a dedicated group. The emissions are displayed only if a group contains those services.

Tracking enterprise emissions with carbon calculator

​ The enterprise level view of carbon calculator enables you to view and export emissions data for your entire enterprise account. You must be assigned the Usage report viewer role on the enterprise service in the enterprise parent account in order to view and export the emissions data at the enterprise level. For more information about assigning access, see Assigning access to account management services.

In the enterprise level view, you can filter your emissions data down to a specific account group or account by clicking that entity in the account hierarchy. The enterprise view provides two additional widgets: ​

• Emissions by account group: GHG emissions broken down by account group. This displays if the entity being viewed contains account groups. Emissions listed under "Miscellaneous" do not belong to an account group. ​
• Emissions by account: GHG emissions are broken down by account. This will display if the entity that is being viewed contains only accounts. ​ Learn more about setting up and managing Enterprise accounts. ​

Working with the carbon calculator API

​ Users can pull emissions data or incorporate that data into their own applications and processes by leveraging the Carbon Calculator API.

Zero-emissions data centers

The following table shows the locations that are considered to be zero-emissions data centers for 2024. Data centers are considered zero-emissions because they are powered by renewable energy. Additional data centers can be added periodically.

Carbon intensity is the emission rate for grams of carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions that are released per unit of energy produced.

Carbon calculator terms

The following are the terms that are used within the carbon calculator documentation.

Energy

Electricity, fuels, and Purchased Energy Commodities used to operate facilities. It does not include energy used for transportation or similar activities.

Energy Conservation

Actions that avoid or reduce consumption of energy or improve operational energy efficiency. The results need to be supported by measurements and/or calculations based upon actual operating conditions. Examples of Energy Conservation actions include: using building monitoring and/or management and control software to optimize Energy Consumption; installing efficient lighting and cooling for buildings; using night setbacks on equipment; using variable frequency drives, replacing boilers or chillers and other infrastructure upgrades; optimizing efficiency through maintenance or operational actions; consolidating and virtualizing IT systems; reducing data center cooling delivery; raising IT equipment inlet temperatures.

Another example of Energy Conservation involves more efficient use of existing space and assets while maintaining the same general business mission and production output. In order to report Energy Conservation savings, specific actions must be taken by the local energy management team when moving or consolidating activities into more energy efficient space (e.g., office space, data centers), provided that there is no associated reduction in business mission and Energy Conservation can be demonstrated when normalized against applicable operational parameters. Energy reduction due to downsizing or restructuring activities such as building shutdown, ramping down or outsourcing of operations do not qualify as energy conservation.

Savings from Energy Conservation are only applied to a maximum duration of one continuous 12-month period, which may span across two calendar years. Energy savings may be prorated for each calendar year if month-to-month savings are consistent (e.g., a lighting project) or reported monthly where savings differ or are absent in some months based on the time of year (e.g., a free cooling or chiller optimization project).

Energy Consumption

Quantity of energy applied per unit of time to perform work.

Energy Efficiency

Ratio or other quantitative relationship between an output of performance, service, goods, commodities, or energy, and an input of energy. This can be used to demonstrate how effectively energy is used.

Energy Management

Activities associated with managing the Energy Consumption, Energy Use and efficiency, Energy Conservation, cost and procurement of Energy across IBM's business.

Energy Use

Manner or kind of application of energy to generate work. Examples include lighting, heating and cooling of buildings, manufacturing, and data center operations.

Greenhouse Gas (GHG)

Gaseous substance that, when released to the atmosphere, has a warming effect on Earth.

Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE)

Ratio of the data center total energy consumption to information technology equipment energy consumption, calculated, measured or assessed across the same period.

Purchased Energy Commodities

Steam, chilled water and hot water generated by a third-party and supplied to an IBM Location.

Renewable Energy

Energy sources that are naturally replenishing but which may be flow-limited, including biomass, biogas, bioethanol, hydro-power, solar photovoltaic, concentrated solar power, wind power, geothermal, ocean thermal, wave action, and tidal action.