Understanding the customer carbon footprint tool - AWS Billing

Understanding the customer carbon footprint tool

This page defines each console section, so you can understand the information provided in depth.

The unit of measurement for carbon emissions is metric tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent (MTCO2e), an industry-standard measure. This measurement considers multiple greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide. All greenhouse gas emissions are converted to the amount of carbon dioxide that would result in equivalent warming.

Carbon emissions data is available for the previous 36 months. New data is available monthly, with a delay of three months as AWS gathers and processes the data that's required to provide your carbon emissions estimates. You will see your data if the trailing 36 month total carbon emissions are collectively greater than 0.1 MT. The customer carbon footprint tool shows your carbon footprint at the 0.001 metric ton, or kilogram, resolution.

Your carbon emissions summary

This section shows your estimated AWS emissions and estimated emissions savings. Emissions savings are divided into two categories:

  • Emission savings from AWS cloud infrastructure efficiencies: this number is the emissions savings associated with using cloud infrastructure, based on a 451 Research report. The report shows that moving workloads from on-premise to AWS can lower the workload carbon footprint by an average of 72%.

  • Emission savings from AWS purchase of renewable energy: this number is the difference between the carbon footprint emissions calculated using the location-based method (LBM) and the market-based method (MBM).

Your emissions by geography

This section shows the carbon emissions associated with each applicable geographical region. This information shows high-level geographical groupings such as AMER, EMEA, and not by AWS Regions.

Your emissions by service

This section shows the carbon emissions resulting from your usage of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3), and any other AWS products and services.

Your AWS carbon emissions

This section shows trends in your carbon emissions over time. You can choose between a monthly, quarterly, or annual view.

Projected future emissions

This graph shows how your carbon emissions are projected to change over time. These figures are based on your current AWS usage profile.

The Projected future emissions graph isn't impacted by your date range selection.