Re: How many emissions in a GB?

Hello Ismael,

Thanks for this try.

There are several important points to notice.

1. No linearity

Network.
There's no linearity of environmental costs for fixed lines (DSL, fiber)
and HDD. That means that we should better not divide a number of GB
exchanged by the environmental cost of the infrastructure. This is
nonsense.
One the other hand, environmental impacts of 4G / 5G are much more linear.

Storage.
Same situation for storage. We should better not divide the environmental
cost of producing and using an hardrive disk (HDD) by its capacity of
storage. This is non linear.
One the other hand, environmental impacts of SSD are much more linear.


2. LCA methodology

From a methodological perspective, one should better use the Life Cycle
Assessment (LCA approach) which is based on standards (ISO 14040 and ISO
14044) and is commonly used in most of the world to assess environmental
impacts. In Europe, where I'm based, you must use this methodology to
assess the environmental impact of digital stuff. See
https://ec.europa.eu/environment/eussd/smgp/ef_methods.htm


3. NegaOctet and EcoIndex
As part of the NegaOctet.org and EcoIndex (see https://github.com/cnumr/)
projects, we already calculated an average environmental cost for a web
page.  The first approach (NegaOctet) is based on an LCA modeling peer
reviewed by a French public research body. The second project is based on
another LCA of one of the top 10 French website.

Environmental impacts already calculated:
Write, send and read an email
Watch 1 hour of streaming video
Download or upload
Store in the cloud
Set up a webconference
Set up a audioconference
Search for an information

For each of these functional units, we have several scenarios based on
different parameters. And for each scenario, we provide 29 environmental
impacts - Global Warming Potential, Ionising radiations, Abiotic resources
depletion, Water Usage, etc. - based on international and european
standards (ISO 14040/44, PEF, etc.).

If it's of interest for the group, I would ask my partners if they allow me
to provide some web environmental impact factors to this working group.

Best,
Fred
+33 6 16 95 96 01
GreenIT,.fr founder
We provide data about the digital world's environmental impacts.


Le lun. 22 août 2022 à 01:13, Ismael Velasco <ismaelv.dev@gmail.com> a
écrit :

> I thought this might be of interest to the community, in terms of the need
> to choose metrics for measuring the carbon impact of the applications we
> design.
>
> https://ismaelvelasco.dev/emissions-in-1gb
>
> I've written a blog that goes into the range of factors involved in
> determining the CO2 emissions of data transmissions.  I've all of these
> referenced in various articles, but haven't come across one that references
> them all in the same place, with tools and strategies for choosing how to
> evaluate and monitor emissions from data.
>
> TLDR: There is no straightforward metric available (possible?), and the
> emissions of 1GB will vary by hardware, software, use case and grid
> intensity. More particularly the emissions will vary by source, device,
> model, signal type, transfer protocol, active software, use case and grid
> energy source at a particular moment.
>
> I give a brief intro to each in my article, and recommend the focus be on
> improvement over exactitude, emission reduction over precision tracking,
> iterating over time to improve and refine metrics.
>
> This would be relevant when it comes to issuing guidelines, or integrating
> emissions tracking into browsers, in dev tools or more prominently.
> Likewise when it comes to green web certification projects.
>
> Appreciate any feedback!
>