Whitepaper:Quantifying Data Center Scope 3 GHG Emissions to Prioritize Reduction Efforts

This paper is meant for any company that uses IT resources, including companies in the data center business (e.g., colocation and cloud providers) and enterprise companies that depend on cloud-based IT resources. As the data center industry transitions to renewable energy, the focus of carbon emissions turns to Scope 3, the indirect emissions from a data center’s value chain. However, quantifying and reporting on Scope 3 presents a significant challenge for data center operators. This is mainly due to a lack of three resources: reliable supplier data, quantitative tools, and an accounting and reporting methodology.

Without understanding Scope 3 emissions, it’s hard for data center operators to prioritize their carbon-reduction efforts as they need answers to questions like:

• What is the total carbon footprint (Scope 1, 2, and 3) of my data center?

• Does my data center emit more carbon from Scope 2 energy use or embodied carbon of material/equipment from Scope 3 supply chain?

• How much embodied carbon is in my data center?

• Of everything in my data center, what causes(ed) the most emissions?

• Where can I find the data/tools to quantify my embodied carbon?