6. Eligibility, Selection, and Inclusion Logic
What is included and how it is selected and mapped.
6.1 Usage Eligibility
Every unit of cloud usage is processed. Usage that represents resource consumption, such as compute hours, storage volumes, data transfer, and API requests, contributes to the emissions calculations. Usage that does not represent resource consumption, such as support charges or reserved instance fees, is retained for categorisation purposes but does not contribute to emissions totals.
6.2 Hardware Mapping
Each unit of cloud usage is mapped to the hardware components introduced in Section 4.
For usage with direct hardware visibility, such as compute instances where the vCPU count and memory allocation are specified, the hardware components are taken directly from the resource specification. For managed services where the usage type is more abstract, such as per-request or per-GB-month pricing, the mapping relies on research into cloud provider documentation and public technical disclosures to determine which hardware components are responsible for delivering each unit of work.
Where a unit of cloud usage cannot be mapped to a known hardware profile, the methodology applies the most closely analogous configuration, subject to internal review. New hardware profiles are created as cloud providers introduce services with hardware characteristics that cannot be adequately represented by existing ones.
6.3 Regional Mapping
The cloud region of each unit of cloud usage is mapped to the corresponding geographical coordinates and electricity grid. This determines the applicable Grid Carbon Intensity factor, Power Usage Effectiveness value, and Water Usage Effectiveness value. Greenpixie maintains a mapping of all cloud provider regions to their corresponding grid zones.
6.4 Temporal Mapping
Where available, the methodology uses hourly Grid Carbon Intensity data matched to the usage period of each unit of cloud usage. Where hourly data is not available for a given region, the methodology falls back to daily, monthly, or annual averages in accordance with the data tier available in GPX Grid.