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Operational Carbon Engineering Tool

WEB SITE
CARBON
CALCULATOR.

Model the actual equipment that keeps a site online, the hours it remains powered, its measured or declared power curve, facility overhead, infrastructure allocation, and the lifecycle carbon intensity of the electricity supplying it.

Calculation boundary: operational electricity for the infrastructure you place in the plan, plus optional user-entered embodied emissions. Browser devices and third-party internet infrastructure are excluded unless you add measured energy for them. No generic “kWh per gigabyte” factor is silently assumed. Decimal precision does not remove measurement uncertainty; replace published profiles with wall measurements when available.

Infrastructure Model

Build the system. Then account for every powered hour.

0 kWh/year 0 kg CO₂e/year

Drag nodes to arrange them. Select a node to edit its operating assumptions. Connections document topology; they do not add energy unless the connected hardware is also present as a node.

No equipment in the plan. Add a device above or load the measured example configuration.

The map locates the selected national dataset. National averages do not resolve regional, utility, contractual, or hourly differences within that country.

Electricity Source

Lifecycle intensity — gCO₂e/kWh
Fossil generation — % of national generation

Enter a lifecycle intensity, not “zero” merely because annual certificates were purchased.

Shares must total 100%. Default factors are IPCC AR5 lifecycle medians and remain editable because technology and geography matter.

Generation mix total 0%
IT electricity 0 kWh/year before PUE
Facility electricity 0 kWh/year after PUE
Operational emissions 0 kg CO₂e/year
Total incl. embodied 0 kg CO₂e/year
Allocated per page view 0 g CO₂e/page view
Fossil generation share 0% context, not a multiplier
Annual device-level calculation
Equipment Power at duty Powered hours Allocation IT kWh Facility kWh kg CO₂e

Formula Applied Per Node

Efacility = quantity × hours/day × days/year × P(duty) ÷ 1000 × PUE × allocation CO₂eoperational = ΣEfacility × grid intensity ÷ 1000 g/page view = (kg CO₂e operational + embodied allocation) × 1000 ÷ annual page views

Traceable Hardware Data

Sourced power catalogue

Whole-system wall measurements, device idle/active figures, and component TDP/TBP values are labelled separately. A thermal design figure is useful for a power budget; it is not a substitute for measured server wall power. The catalogue is source-gated: unlisted equipment must use the custom measured path rather than receiving an invented industry-average value.

Sourced hardware records
Category Manufacturer / model Idle W Load / declared W Measurement basis Source Build

1. Power

Use a curve when one exists.

SPECpower server records contain measured average wall power at active idle and at ten load points from 10% to 100%. The calculator linearly interpolates only between those published points. Vendor “maximum” values remain constant upper bounds unless another measured point exists.

2. Time & Duty

Uptime and workload are different variables.

Powered hours determine how long the equipment consumes energy. Duty selects power along its curve during those hours. At 0% duty, powered equipment still consumes its published active-idle or conservative maximum value.

3. Allocation

Dedicated means 100%.

A dedicated machine belongs entirely to the site, even if traffic is tiny. Shared infrastructure requires an explicit allocation rule; this tool uses the user-entered percentage and displays it in every device row rather than hiding a tenancy assumption.

4. Facility Overhead

PUE is a measured multiplier.

PUE multiplies IT energy to include cooling and power-delivery overhead. The default is 1.00 so no facility overhead is invented. Enter the facility’s published or measured value per node.

5. Grid Carbon

Intensity drives emissions.

Ember’s annual intensity includes lifecycle emissions and is multiplied by facility kWh. Fossil generation share is reported as context only; multiplying energy by fossil percentage would incorrectly treat non-fossil generation as emission-free.

6. Per-Page Attribution

Annual energy comes first.

Per-view carbon is annual allocated emissions divided by annual page views. One annual page view on a dedicated always-on server therefore inherits that server’s full annual allocated footprint.

Primary Sources & Data Provenance