Carbon per [Time] Storage Category
Definition
Measure of carbon emissions (CO2e) for a period of time by gigabytes of storage capacity. This metric helps organizations understand the environmental impact of cloud storage usage and make decisions to reduce their carbon footprint by choosing more efficient or renewable-energy-powered storage options.
Formula, as published
Storage CO2e per Time unit = Storage (CO2e/gigabytes) / Time unit
- Data sources:
- Carbon consumption data source, CSP Billing data, CSP FOCUS files
- Additional guidance:
- Always try to use intelligent storage tiering and storage lifecycle policies, retention policies, record management and data retention policies to make informed decisions for optimizing carbon Always be aware of your organization data compliance and legal requirements and abide by them Region selection based on your organization’s data confidentiality agreement
Calculate it
Example values to start with; replace them with yours.
From the FinOps Foundation
More Sustainability KPIs
Definition and formula: Carbon per [Time] Storage Category, FinOps KPI library, FinOps Foundation, licensed CC BY 4.0, read 16 Oct 2026. Changed: HTML removed, dashes and British spellings changed, formula split from its data sources and examples. The calculator and the notes are Finitizer’s.
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