1. Introduction
Purpose, audience, and context of the methodology.
This document describes Greenpixie's methodology for calculating and measuring greenhouse gas emissions, energy consumption, and water usage data for public cloud computing workloads. It is intended for customers, partners, procurement teams, auditors, regulators, and technically literate readers who require a clear understanding of how Greenpixie derives its cloud environmental impact metrics.
Emissions from public cloud fall under a cloud user's Scope 3 and typically fall under Category 1 or Category 11. Organisations increasingly need accurate, granular emissions data at the level of individual cloud services and units of cloud usage to meet regulatory reporting requirements, set reduction targets, and make informed procurement decisions.
This methodology calculates energy, carbon, water, and embodied emissions metrics for public cloud service usage, at the granularity of individual units of cloud usage defined by their service, region, and period of use. The same metrics support several delivery modes, being enrichment of a client's cloud usage data, access through an API, and precomputed rate cards. This methodology supports Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. Per-token energy and carbon for cloud AI inference are addressed separately in the companion Greenpixie Methodology for Cloud AI Token Inference Energy, Carbon, and Water Measurement.
The sections that follow describe the scope, inputs, calculation process, quality controls, governance, and outputs of this methodology. This methodology is aligned to the GHG Protocol and prepared with reference to ISO 14064-1. The Greenpixie Methodology has been independently verified in accordance with ISO 14064-3 at a limited level of assurance.