This principle in the sustainability pillar of the Google Cloud Well-Architected Framework provides recommendations to help you measure and continuously improve the sustainability of your workloads in Google Cloud.
Principle overview
To ensure that your cloud workloads remain sustainable, you need accurate and transparent metrics. Verifiable metrics let you translate sustainability goals to actions. Every resource that you create in the cloud has an associated carbon footprint. To build and maintain sustainable cloud architectures, you must integrate the measurement of carbon data into your operational feedback loop.
The recommendations in this section provide a framework for using Carbon Footprint to quantify carbon emissions, identify carbon hotspots, implement targeted workload optimizations, and verify the outcomes of the optimization efforts. This framework lets you efficiently align your cost optimization goals with verifiable carbon reduction targets.
Carbon Footprint reporting methodology
Carbon Footprint provides a transparent, auditable, and globally-aligned report of your cloud-related emissions. The report adheres to international standards, primarily the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol for carbon reporting and accounting. The Carbon Footprint report uses location-based and market-based accounting methods. Location-based accounting is based on the local grid's emissions factor. Market-based accounting considers Google's purchases of carbon-free energy (CFE). This dual approach helps you understand both the physical-grid impact and the carbon benefit of your workloads in Google Cloud.
For more information about how the Carbon Footprint report is prepared, including the data sources used, Scope-3 inclusions, and the customer allocation model, see Carbon Footprint reporting methodology.
Recommendations
To use carbon measurement for continuous improvement, consider the recommendations in the following sections. The recommendations are structured as phases of maturity for implementing sustainable-by-design cloud operations:
- Phase 1: Establish a baseline
- Phase 2: Identify hotspots
- Phase 3: Implement targeted optimization
- Phase 4: Institutionalize sustainability practices and reporting
Phase 1: Establish a baseline
In this phase, you set up the necessary tools and ensure that data is accessible and correctly integrated.
- Grant permissions: Grant permissions to teams like FinOps, SecOps and
platform engineering so that they can access the
Carbon Footprint dashboard in the Google Cloud console. Grant the
Carbon Footprint Viewer role
(
roles/billing.carbonViewer) in Identity and Access Management (IAM) for the appropriate billing account. - Automate data export: Configure automated export of Carbon Footprint data to BigQuery. The exported data lets you perform deep analysis, correlate carbon data with cost and usage data, and produce custom reports.
- Define carbon-related key performance indicators (KPIs): Establish metrics that connect carbon emissions to business value. For example, carbon intensity is a metric for the number of kilograms of CO2 equivalent per customer, transaction, or revenue unit.
Phase 2: Identify carbon hotspots
Identify the areas that have the largest environmental impact by analyzing the granular data in the Carbon Footprint report. Use the following techniques for this analysis:
- Prioritize by scope: To quickly identify the largest gross carbon emitters, analyze the data in the dashboard by project, region, and service.
- Use dual-accounting: When you evaluate the carbon impact in a region, consider both location-based emissions (the environmental impact of the local electrical grid) and market-based emissions (the benefit of Google's CFE investments).
- Correlate with cost: Join the carbon data in BigQuery with your billing data and assess the impact of optimization actions on sustainability and cost. High cost can often be correlated with high carbon emissions.
- Annotate data to measure return on effort (ROE): Annotate the carbon data in BigQuery with specific events, like right-sizing a resource or decommissioning a large service. The annotations let you attribute reductions in carbon emission and cost to specific optimization initiatives, so that you can measure and demonstrate the outcome of each initiative.
Phase 3: Implement targeted optimization
This is the execution phase for implementing sustainable-by-design cloud operations. Use the following strategies to optimize specific resources that you identify as significant drivers of cost and carbon emissions:
- Decommission unattended projects: Regularly check the unattended project recommender that's integrated with the Carbon Footprint data. To achieve immediate, verified reductions in carbon emissions and cost, automate the review and eventual removal of unused projects.
- Right-size resources: Match the provisioned resource capacity to actual utilization by using Active Assist right-sizing recommenders like machine type recommendations for Compute Engine VMs. For compute-intensive tasks and AI workloads, use the most efficient machine types and AI models.
- Adopt carbon-aware scheduling: For batch workloads that aren't time-critical, integrate regional CFE data into the scheduling logic. Where feasible, limit the creation of new resources to low-carbon regions by using the resource locations constraint in Organization Policy Service.
- Reduce data sprawl: Implement data governance policies to ensure that infrequently accessed data is transitioned to an appropriate cold storage class (Nearline, Coldline, or Archive) or is permanently deleted. This strategy helps to reduce the energy cost of your storage resources.
- Refine application code: Fix code-level inefficiencies that cause excessive resource usage or unnecessary computation.
For more information, see the following:
- Use regions that consume low-carbon energy
- Optimize AI and ML workloads
- Optimize resource usage
- Develop energy-efficient software
- Optimize data and storage for sustainability
Phase 4: Institutionalize your sustainability practices and reporting
In this phase, you embed carbon measurement into your governance framework. This approach helps to ensure that your organization has the capabilities and controls that are necessary for continuous sustainability improvements and verifiable reporting.
- Implement GreenOps governance: Establish a formal GreenOps function or working group to integrate Carbon Footprint data with Cloud Billing data. This function must define accountability for carbon reduction targets across projects, align cost optimization with sustainability goals, and implement reporting to track carbon efficiency against spending.
- Use Carbon Footprint data for reporting and compliance: Use the verified, auditable Carbon Footprint data in BigQuery to create formal environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosures. This approach lets you meet stakeholder demands for transparency and helps to ensure compliance with mandatory and voluntary regulations.
- Invest in training and awareness: Implement mandatory sustainability training for relevant technical and non-technical teams. Your teams need to know how to access and interpret the Carbon Footprint data and how to apply optimization recommendations in their daily workflows and design choices. For more information, see Provide role-based sustainability training.
- Define carbon requirements: Incorporate carbon emission metrics as non-functional requirements (NFR) in your application's acceptance criteria for new deployments. This practice helps to ensure that architects and developers prioritize low-carbon design options from the start of the application development lifecycle.
- Automate GreenOps: Automate the implementation of Active Assist recommendations by using scripts, templates, and infrastructure-as-code (IaC) pipelines. This practice ensures that teams apply recommendations consistently and rapidly across the organization.