Important
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Environmental Footprint calculation breakdown
Reviewed on 11 September 2024 • Published on 11 September 2024
This page details the methodology used to calculate the environmental footprint of Scaleway cloud services, and Bare Metal offers. This methodology ensures transparency and precision, as it provides reliable estimations covering a full lifecycle analysis.
Methodology overview
Our calculation methodology was developed in collaboration with the green IT specialist consultancy firm IJO, ensuring a rigorous and expert-validated approach to assessing environmental impact accurately and transparently.
Our Methodology is based on the ADEME (French Government Agency for Ecological Transition) Product Category Rules (PCR) for Datacenter and Cloud services, which provide a standardized framework for calculating and reporting the environmental impact of data centers and cloud services. These rules are designed to ensure consistency, transparency, and comparability in the assessment of environmental footprints across the industry.
The ADEME PCR specifies the methodology for conducting Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) for data center operations, which includes the evaluation of energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, resource usage, and other environmental impacts associated with the lifecycle of data center infrastructures and cloud services. This lifecycle covers all stages from raw material extraction, manufacturing, and transportation, to the use and end-of-life disposal of data center equipment. The stages of the lifecycle that are really significant in the total impact of a server are its manufacturing and its use. We will therefore focus on these two stages in the rest of this documentation.
By adhering to PCR guidelines, we provide reliable and standardized environmental impact data. This facilitates better decision-making for both providers and consumers of data center and cloud services, as it allows for clear comparisons and informed choices regarding sustainability.
In addition, to provide an even more comprehensive and realistic assessment, we have extended this methodology to include several additional elements integral to our operations’ overall environmental impact.
These additional elements cover:
- Cross-functional IT equipment - Servers and storage devices dedicated to the enterprise as a whole, managing offers, or equipment held in stock. This includes:
- Enterprise servers and storage devices - IT equipment dedicated to Scaleway’s internal digital services
- Servers and storage devices for managing offers - IT equipment for management and supervision of Scaleway offers
- Servers and storage equipment in stock - IT equipment in stock and waiting to be commissioned
- Non-IT cross-functional elements - all components necessary for the smooth operation of our company, such as office facilities, employee transportation, and other logistics. Refer to our 2024 Environmental Impact Report for more information about these components.
By integrating these additional factors into the PCR Data center and cloud methodology, we ensure that our calculations reflect a more complete and transparent view of our environmental impact.
Detailed calculation breakdown
The final calculation of the environmental impact considers several critical factors to provide a thorough and accurate assessment. This includes considering the manufacturing processes for data centers and related technical components, network machines, and servers directly used by customers. Additionally, the assessment accounts for servers dedicated to IT tools and those maintained in stock.
The usage phase also includes every data center Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE), which is multiplied by the impact related to electricity consumption of network servers, customer-used servers, and servers used for transversal IT tools. This approach ensures that both the direct and indirect energy consumption associated with data center operations is accurately represented.
Our calculations of the impact of electricity consumption are based on a ‘location-based’ approach, although we have PPA (Power Purchase Agreements) type contracts for each of our data centers, we have chosen not to take them into account in accordance with ADEME guidelines.
Furthermore, the calculation will integrate the environmental impact of all elements necessary for the proper functioning of the enterprise. This includes the office premises, employee transportation, and other logistical aspects.
The details of the calculations for each of these elements are detailed below.
Definition of the variables
All calculations will use the following variables:
Note
The acronyms used below are based on the French phrases for these terms.
- dU: duration of use of the equipment included in the study
- DDV: lifespan
- PuissEqt: rated power of the equipment
- PuissCommDC: proportion of the data center’s installed power reserved by customers
- FE: emission factor
- %mutualization: mutualization factor
Tip
Refer to the Environmental Footprint concepts page for more information about each of the concepts above.
Data center and technical environment
To calculate the impact of the data center and the technical environment, it is necessary to have either a preliminary study carried out by the hardware suppliers and data center administrators or a quote including all the components. Without such a study, we have chosen to use ADEME data to evaluate the impact of the construction of the data center and technical environment (air conditioning and power supply system).
To allocate the environmental impact of the manufacturing of the data center and the technical environment we multiply the proportion of the data center lifespan that corresponds to the device’s usage time by the specific equipment’s power usage relative to the total power reserved by customers in the data center by the data center emission factor.
Calculation example
For the use of an Elastic Metal server with a power of 110w for 100 hours in a 2000m2 data center which has a power of 3000 kw (3e+6w) and a lifespan of 25 years (219 000 hours) and considering via ADEME estimates that the impact of the manufacturing of this data center and its technical environment is 3.3e+6 kgCo2e, we make the following calculation:
Therefore 0,011 kgCO2e is added to the total manufacturing impact for the use of this server.
Network
To calculate the environmental impact of your large-scale use of the products, we include part of the impact of manufacturing the network machines that are necessary for the operation of our products. To do this, we divide the impact of manufacturing network equipment over its entire lifespan and attribute this impact based on the energy consumption of the equipment used in order to assign a proportional share of the environmental impact to each piece of equipment. Finally, we estimate the impact of manufacturing the equipment using the boavizta database.
For the use of network machines induced by your use of Scaleway products, we take into account the energy consumption of the network machines and multiply it by the emission factor linked to the production of this energy that we recover thanks to the EMBER database. We then attribute this share of impact to each machine according to its energy consumption.
Customer servers
To accurately calculate the environmental impact of each server used directly for Scaleway offers, we will implement specific allocation rules tailored to each product. These rules will ensure that the impact is precisely distributed according to the unique usage patterns and resource demands of different products.
Each product will have its own set of criteria to allocate the environmental footprint, considering factors such as server utilization rates, operational timeframes, and the specific technical requirements of the product. By customizing the allocation rules for each offering, we can ensure a more accurate and fair representation of the environmental impact associated with each product.
Bare Metal
For bare metal servers, the allocation of environmental impact is straightforward due to the direct association between a user and a server. The environmental impact of a bare metal server is entirely attributed to the user utilizing it. This encompasses the energy consumption during its operation, as well as a portion of the impact from the server’s manufacturing process.
The manufacturing impact is prorated based on the server’s lifespan and the duration of its use by the customer. By dividing the total manufacturing impact by the expected lifetime of the server and then allocating it according to the specific usage period, we ensure that each user is accountable for their fair share of the server’s overall environmental footprint.
Calculation example
For the use of an Elastic Metal server, with a lifespan of 6 years (52 560 hours) and power of 110w, for 100 hours and considering via Boavizta estimates that the impact of the manufacturing of this server is 850 kgCo2e, we make the following calculation:
Therefore 1,62 kgCO2e is added to the total manufacturing impact for the use of this server.
Cross-IT equipment & stock
Our calculation will also incorporate the environmental footprint of all transversal tools essential for the functioning of the Scaleway.
To determine their manufacturing impact, we add the environmental footprint of each machine hosting these transversal tools over the duration of customer usage. This aggregated impact will then be divided by the total number of customers. A “customer” is defined as an active organization, that is to say an organization which consumes and which is billed.
To determine stock manufacturing impact, we will divide the sum of the impact of all hardware components in stock by the total number of servers.
Non-IT cross-functional elements
Finally, our comprehensive environmental impact calculation will include the “Non-IT cross-functional elements.” This category encompasses the environmental footprint of all other essential components required for Scaleway’s operations, such as office facilities, employee transportation, the company cafeteria, and various logistical aspects.
To integrate this into the overall calculation, we will first get the total environmental impact of these non-IT elements from Scaleway Impact report. This total impact will then be divided by the number of customers. This approach ensures that every customer shares a portion of the environmental burden associated with maintaining the broader operational infrastructure, thereby providing a complete and transparent picture of Scaleway’s environmental footprint.
Water consumption
Providing water consumption metrics is essential in the context of cloud services hosted in data centers because water plays a key role in cooling systems, which ensure the optimal operating temperatures for servers. The amount of water consumed depends on factors such as the temperature, humidity, and the design of the cooling system. For instance, in hot and dry climates, water consumption tends to be higher. At Scaleway, we choose our data centers also taking this criterion into account to reduce water consumption as much as possible.
This data is availlable for:
- FR-PAR-1
- FR-PAR-2
- FR-PAR-3
- NL-AMS-1
For each Scaleway product or service in these Availability Zones, we calculate the water consumption based on its energy consumption.
To estimate the water consumption by multiplying the total energy consumption for each service by the Water Usage Effectiveness (WUE), as such:
Calculation example
At Scaleway we currently collect power consumption metrics for Elastic Metal servers. Using an Elastic Metal server as an example, we can assume that:
- A server consumes 500 kWh of energy per month.
- The WUE of the data center (PAR-DC5) is 0,014 liters/kWh.
Therefore, the total water consumption for the server would be: