Measuring Emissions of Digital Services (and Beyond)
summary
Describes how to perform carbon accounting for digital services using concrete methods and tools: comparing cloud provider bills with CO2 estimates (which closely match), applying conversion factors that can vary up to 10×, and using tools like Cloud Carbon Footprint and Green Web Foundation metrics. Covers life-cycle examples including an LCA of a LEGO brick and manufacturing data for iPhones (~60 kg CO2 per device), and shows an actionable finding that a dark UI background can reduce phone energy use by about 20–60%.
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chapters (12)
- 0:00Introduction
- 2:50Ethical choices to climate advocacy
- 5:38Measuring emissions first step
- 7:27Scope 1 2 3 emissions
- 10:00Life Cycle Assessment
- 14:36Challenges in digital emissions
- 18:13Digital emissions by component
- 20:42Embodied carbon in hardware
- 22:32Data center emissions tools
- 26:29CO2 per search query case study
- 30:51Tools and standards for emissions
- 32:19From measurement to action
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