Impact Category: Emissions (CO2-eq)
Priority: Digital Carbon Footprint
Improve transparency and accountability of greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption in every stage of the digital value chain to enable better data for environmental impact assessments.
Objective: Assessing a Digital Carbon Footprint is adopted as industry standard across the entire digital value chain for consistent monitoring and reporting.
Estimated timeframe: January 2021 to December 2021
Work on this priority is sponsored by:
United Nations - Sustainable Development Goals
This priority contributes to global sustainability goals:
Affordable and Clean Energy (7)
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Climate Action (13)
Learn MoreIdentified challenges
These are the challenges and barriers identified to reach the target of this roadmap priority. They are grouped by supply chain layer based on our digital economy taxonomy.
User
Carbon Footprint of digital product or service not visible
Work in progressGlobalTechnologyCritical
Digital products & services can not be differentiated by carbon emissions
Work in progressGlobalBusiness ModelHigh
Software Application
Attribution of carbon emissions to an application is not standardized
Raising awarenessGlobalStandardizationHigh
Resource Provisioning
Virtualization & orchestration software do not provide interfaces to assess embodied & operational carbon emissions
Raising awarenessGlobalTechnologyCritical
Digital resources do not measure or report carbon emissions
Work in progressGlobalTechnologyCritical
Hardware
Embodied carbon reports are inconsistent across manufacturers
Raising awarenessGlobalDataHigh
Networks
A standardized approach to measuring carbon intensity of network traffic
Not startedGlobalStandardizationHigh
Data Center Facility
Equipment manufacturers do not yet provide information on embodied carbon
Not startedGlobalDataHigh
Lack of standardized interface to retrieve embodied carbon, electricity use and operational carbon emissions from a facility
Raising awarenessGlobalStandardizationMedium
Facilities do not provide consistent data on cooling & infrastructure overhead for carbon emission assessment
Not startedGlobalDataMedium
A standard for measuring and reporting embodied carbon for equipment
Not startedGlobalStandardizationMedium
Energy
Reliable, trustworthy & open data on the carbon intensity of electricity is missing
Lacking supportGlobalDataHigh
Green power certificates are distorting assessment of total carbon emissions created by the digital economy
Raising awarenessGlobalPolicyMedium