Optimizing Electricity PUE, WUE, Between Regions, or Cloud Service Providers
Definition
Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) is a metric that evaluates the energy efficiency of a data center by measuring the ratio between the total energy consumed by the data center and the energy used specifically by its IT equipment, such as servers, storage, and network devices. Similarly, Water Usage Effectiveness (WUE) quantifies water usage efficiency in a data center by calculating the ratio of total water usage, measured in liters, to the total IT energy consumption, measured in kilowatt-hours (kWh).
Formula, as published
PUE = Total Facility Energy / IT Equiment Energy WUE = Total Water Used by the Data Center / Total IT Equipment Energy Consumption (in kWh)
- Data sources:
- CSP annual Sustainability reports
- Additional guidance:
- This KPI is beyond public cloud Some Cloud providers publish their WUE and PUE per region and this should be taken into account in calculations, when choosing regions & when choosing cloud providers 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: Optimizing Electricity PUE, WUE, Between Regions, or Cloud Service Providers, 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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