Increased visibility of your carbon emissions data with AWS Customer Carbon Footprint Tool

Dennis Newberry, Principal Product Manager, and Kurt Yeager, Sustainability Product Manager, contributed to the blog

The Customer Carbon Footprint Tool now supports the CSV download option, giving you the ability to review carbon footprint data in detail and ingest the data into other reporting systems for further analysis and information sharing.

Background

The business value of AWS goes beyond the reduction of Total Cost of Ownership. AWS’ economies of scale, high availability, and agility help gain staff productivity, reduce business risks, and improve sustainability. Learn more about benefits you can get with AWS.

In recent years, more organizations have started to focus on operating business in a more efficient and sustainable way and have set energy efficiency target. AWS launched the Customer Carbon Footprint Tool (CCFT) in March 2022, allowing you to track the carbon emissions from your use of AWS services, and the current and projected emission savings by leveraging AWS’ infrastructures operated with renewable energy.

Increased visibility of your carbon emissions data with downloadable CSV files

Previously, the CCFT summary reports were available for download in the PDF format. However, many of you have expressed the interest to download the carbon footprint report in the CSV format, so you can ingest the data into a more comprehensive sustainability report based on your organization’s needs. Along with the change of the downloadable report format, AWS also increased the granularity of the data in the report:

• Lowered carbon reporting threshold: AWS has lowered the carbon reporting threshold from one decimal place to three decimal places, which means the carbon emission data is now available at 0.00X metric tons of CO2e, from the previous 0.X metric tons of CO2e. This change will allow customers with smaller environments and carbon footprints less than 0.1 metric tons CO2e to finally view their carbon footprint. By reducing the visible carbon threshold to 1kg, more AWS customers will be able to begin reporting carbon footprint.
• Improved carbon granularity: The CCFT user interface and prior PDF downloads provide monthly summary data by geography or by service. With the new CSV download, you can now analyze carbon data at a multi-dimensional level with month, service, AND geography. For example, you can now see your carbon emissions for Amazon EC2 usage in North America. This helps you to better identify the primary sources of your carbon footprint.

How it works

• Log into your AWS Billing Console, and select “Cost & Usage reports”

Image 1: Locate Cost & Usage reports in the Billing Console

• As you scroll down, you will be able to view a summary report, including your estimated AWS emissions, your emissions saved on AWS, and the distribution of emissions by geography and services. There is a “Download” button, where you can click on and download the detailed data as a CSV file.

Image 2: Customer Carbon Footprint Tool summary charts and the “download” button

• Once you have the CSV report, you will get details for AWS account ID, carbon emissions data by metric tons, AWS service, and geography. This makes it easier for you to either view the data by the dimension of your choice, for instance, a quick pivot by geography then service, or ingesting the data to your current BI system.

Figure 1: Sample CCFT report in the CSV format

Figure 2: Sample pivot report with CCFT data

Conclusions

With the improved visibility and flexibility of your carbon emission reporting, you’ll have more control in managing and optimizing the progress of your sustainability initiatives. Learn more about Customer Carbon Footprint Tool from this user guide.