This Guidance helps customers calculate their carbon footprints, track their Greenhouse gas (GHG) emitting activities, and identify carbon hotspots. The Guidance for Sustainability Insights Framework on AWS provides the software building blocks to help accelerate the design, implementation, or expansion of applications to automate carbon footprint tracking.
Architecture Diagram
[Architecture diagram description]
Step 1
Sustainability subject matter experts (SMEs) and operations personnel submit their respective data sources through a web application built on top of the Sustainability Insights Framework (SIF) on AWS.
Step 2
Amazon Route 53, the Domain Name System (DNS) service, enables front-end clients to resolve the website hostname to Amazon CloudFront, the AWS content delivery network.
CloudFront routes the web requests to the origin servers and caches the static content and assets served from Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and origin servers.
It secures the application traffic using AWS WAF (a web application firewall) to protect the application against common exploits and bots. This web app exposes the access patterns shown in steps 4-9.
Step 3
An administrator uses the SIF Access Management module to configure roles such as sustainability experts, auditors, executives, and operations managers. For example, an auditor could have read-only access to all calculation logs, and an operations manager could have access to submit new activity information (step 7).
The SIF Access Management module controls fine-grained permissions to resources in other SIF modules.
Step 4
The sustainability SME selects the emission factors that are most representative of their business activities and loads them into the SIF Impacts module. Emission factors in this module can be applied in the carbon footprint calculations of a pipeline.
Step 5
A user can define reference data (called "mappings") in the SIF Reference Datasets module. This data can then be used in calculations. For example: mapping a location’s US postal code to the corresponding electrical grid region when calculating a carbon footprint.
Step 6
The sustainability SME defines the calculations based on the methodology required for reporting. The SIF Calculations module allows users to define reusable formulas for carbon accounting of scopes 1, 2, and 3 business activities (such as the fuel consumption of vehicles).
Step 7
Users create pipelines that specify the data source formats and the calculations to run on those data sources in the SIF Pipelines module.
For example, the sustainability SME defines a pipeline to calculate the carbon footprint of fuel consumption from truck transportation using a standardized form that operations managers complete.
Step 8
Data from business operations is uploaded and transformed into carbon footprint data using the SIF Pipelines Processors module. Once the data has been processed through the pipelines, dashboards or reports can be configured for carbon emissions tracking and operations monitoring.
Step 9
The user can configure dashboards or reports to track scopes 1, 2, and 3 such as emissions and other metrics required for climate disclosures. The user can also use the dashboards to identify carbon hotspots, review progress towards climate targets, and draw insights for decarbonization planning.
Step 1
Sustainability subject matter experts (SMEs) and operations personnel submit their respective data sources through a web application built on top of the Sustainability Insights Framework (SIF) on AWS.
Step 2
Amazon Route 53, the Domain Name System (DNS) service, enables front-end clients to resolve the website hostname to Amazon CloudFront, the AWS content delivery network.
CloudFront routes the web requests to the origin servers and caches the static content and assets served from Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and origin servers.
It secures the application traffic using AWS WAF (a web application firewall) to protect the application against common exploits and bots. This web app exposes the access patterns shown in steps 4-9.
Step 3
An administrator uses the SIF Access Management module to configure roles such as sustainability experts, auditors, executives, and operations managers. For example, an auditor could have read-only access to all calculation logs, and an operations manager could have access to submit new activity information (step 7).
The SIF Access Management module controls fine-grained permissions to resources in other SIF modules.
Step 4
The sustainability SME selects the emission factors that are most representative of their business activities and loads them into the SIF Impacts module. Emission factors in this module can be applied in the carbon footprint calculations of a pipeline.
Step 5
A user can define reference data (called "mappings") in the SIF Reference Datasets module. This data can then be used in calculations. For example: mapping a location’s US postal code to the corresponding electrical grid region when calculating a carbon footprint.
Step 6
The sustainability SME defines the calculations based on the methodology required for reporting. The SIF Calculations module allows users to define reusable formulas for carbon accounting of scopes 1, 2, and 3 business activities (such as the fuel consumption of vehicles).
Step 7
Users create pipelines that specify the data source formats and the calculations to run on those data sources in the SIF Pipelines module.
For example, the sustainability SME defines a pipeline to calculate the carbon footprint of fuel consumption from truck transportation using a standardized form that operations managers complete.
Step 8
Data from business operations is uploaded and transformed into carbon footprint data using the SIF Pipelines Processors module. Once the data has been processed through the pipelines, dashboards or reports can be configured for carbon emissions tracking and operations monitoring.
Step 9
The user can configure dashboards or reports to track scopes 1, 2, and 3 such as emissions and other metrics required for climate disclosures. The user can also use the dashboards to identify carbon hotspots, review progress towards climate targets, and draw insights for decarbonization planning.
Well-Architected Pillars
The AWS Well-Architected Framework helps you understand the pros and cons of the decisions you make when building systems in the cloud. The six pillars of the Framework allow you to learn architectural best practices for designing and operating reliable, secure, efficient, cost-effective, and sustainable systems. Using the AWS Well-Architected Tool, available at no charge in the AWS Management Console, you can review your workloads against these best practices by answering a set of questions for each pillar.
The architecture diagram above is an example of a Solution created with Well-Architected best practices in mind. To be fully Well-Architected, you should follow as many Well-Architected best practices as possible.
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Operational ExcellenceRead the Operational Excellence whitepaper
Monitor your organization's operational health and notify operators of faults with Amazon CloudWatch, where you can customize metrics, alarms, and dashboards. For more on how to gain insights into your operations, see the Guidance for Sustainability Insights Framework on AWS.
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SecurityRead the Security whitepaper
Resources deployed by this Guidance are protected by AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) policies and principles. CloudFront allows customers to enable TLS to secure data in transit and also makes use of AWS WAF for additional protection. User authentication is managed through Amazon Cognito, and all APIs use a Cognito authorizer. Data is protected through access controls implemented by IAM and Amazon S3 bucket policies.
The Guidance for Sustainability Insights Framework on AWS provides in-depth, best-practices for architecting secure workloads on AWS.
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ReliabilityRead the Reliability whitepaper
To help your workloads perform their intended function correctly and consistently, this Guidance uses a serverless web application that scales automatically and is automatically deployed across multiple Availability Zones. The architecture is managed through an AWS Cloud Development Kit (AWS CDK).
Implementing reliable workloads for carbon footprint tracking is detailed further in the Guidance for Sustainability Insights Framework on AWS.
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Performance EfficiencyRead the Performance Efficiency whitepaper
CloudFront, a serverless application that caches content, decreases latency to the end user.
The Guidance for Sustainability Insights Framework on AWS has more on the efficient use of computing resources.
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Cost OptimizationRead the Cost Optimization whitepaper
With the serverless web application this Guidance uses, you only pay for what you use. Caching through CloudFront reduces data transfer and access costs for Amazon S3.
For the cost implications of the Sustainability Insights Framework of this Guidance, please refer to the Guidance for Sustainability Insights Framework on AWS.
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SustainabilityRead the Sustainability whitepaper
All computing resources in this Guidance run through AWS Lambda that does not require any hardware provisioning when not in use.
Reducing your total resources is further detailed in the Guidance for Sustainability Insights Framework on AWS.
Implementation Resources
A detailed guide is provided to experiment and use within your AWS account. Each stage of building the Guidance, including deployment, usage, and cleanup, is examined to prepare it for deployment.
The sample code is a starting point. It is industry validated, prescriptive but not definitive, and a peek under the hood to help you begin.
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Disclaimer
The sample code; software libraries; command line tools; proofs of concept; templates; or other related technology (including any of the foregoing that are provided by our personnel) is provided to you as AWS Content under the AWS Customer Agreement, or the relevant written agreement between you and AWS (whichever applies). You should not use this AWS Content in your production accounts, or on production or other critical data. You are responsible for testing, securing, and optimizing the AWS Content, such as sample code, as appropriate for production grade use based on your specific quality control practices and standards. Deploying AWS Content may incur AWS charges for creating or using AWS chargeable resources, such as running Amazon EC2 instances or using Amazon S3 storage.
References to third-party services or organizations in this Guidance do not imply an endorsement, sponsorship, or affiliation between Amazon or AWS and the third party. Guidance from AWS is a technical starting point, and you can customize your integration with third-party services when you deploy the architecture.