The Nuance of Quantifying Digital Carbon Emissions
summary
A practical guide to where estimates end and measurements begin and which tools actually produce usable numbers: regulatory differences require China to report scope 1–3 while US listings report scope 1–2 and scope 3 only if material or tied to net zero goals; Google shows ~75% of 2022 emissions as scope 3 versus Mozilla’s 93% in 2019; front end uses CO2.js and the Firefox profiler to get watts, energy and CO2e; back end tools include Cloud Carbon Footprint, OpenCost and Scaphandre for measured data.
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chapters (8)
- 0:00Digital carbon emissions intro
- 2:11Global reporting requirements
- 9:14Estimating vs measuring emissions
- 13:28Frontend tools and models
- 18:48Frontend energy measurement
- 20:56Network emissions challenges
- 22:42Data center measurement options
- 25:50Resources and next steps
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