Carbon per Unit of Cloud Service SKU
Definition
Carbon emissions per unit of cloud service SKU measure the amount of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) emitted to deliver a specific unit of cloud services, such as compute, storage, and/or networking. This metric allows businesses and consumers to track the environmental impact of cloud usage by resource and make decisions to reduce their carbon footprint by choosing more efficient or renewable-energy-powered solutions.
Formula, as published
Carbon per unit (kgCO2e) = Total Carbon Emissions (kgCO2e) / Total Resource Usage (SKU)
- Data sources:
- Total Carbon Emissions: CSP Carbon Footprint Tool/Dashboard or Sustainability Calculator Total Resource Usage: CSP Billing & Cost Management Tool/Dashboard
- Additional guidance:
- Total Carbon Emissions: The total emissions generated by the datacenter operations, including energy usage, cooling, hardware production, and more, typically reported in kilograms of CO2 equivalent (kgCO2e). Can be identified by location or region, depending if CSP supports carbon reporting as market-based or location-based. Total Resource Usage: This represents the total consumption of the specific cloud resource, such as CPU hours, GB of storage, or data transfer in GB, for the specific cloud services with a SKU.
Calculate it
Example values to start with; replace them with yours.
From the FinOps Foundation
More Sustainability KPIs
Definition and formula: Carbon per Unit of Cloud Service SKU, 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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