Carbon calculator helps with sustainability objectives

IBM has launched a new tool to help enterprises track greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions across cloud services and advance their sustainability performance throughout their hybrid, multicloud journeys. Now generally available, the IBM Cloud Carbon Calculator – an AI-informed dashboard – can help clients access emissions data across a variety of IBM Cloud workloads such as AI, high performance computing (HPC) and financial services.

Across industries, enterprises are embracing modernisation by leveraging hybrid cloud and AI to digitally transform with resiliency, performance, security, and compliance at the forefront, all while remaining focused on delivering value and driving more sustainable business practices. According to a recent study by IBM, 42% of CEOs surveyed pinpoint environmental sustainability as their top challenge over the next three years1. At the same time, the study reports that CEOs are facing pressure to adopt generative AI while also weighing the data management needs to make AI successful. The increase in data processing required for AI workloads can present new challenges for organisations that are looking to reduce their GHG emissions. With more than 43% of CEOs surveyed already using generative AI to inform strategic decisions, organisations should prepare to balance executing high performance workloads with sustainability.

To help clients respond to these challenges, the IBM Cloud Carbon Calculator is designed to quickly spot patterns, anomalies and outliers in data that are potentially associated with higher GHG emissions. Based on technology from IBM Research and through a collaboration with Intel, the tool uses machine learning and advanced algorithms to help organisations uncover emissions hot spots in their IT workload and provide them with the insights to inform their emissions mitigation strategy[2]. 

“As part of any AI transformation roadmap, businesses must consider how to manage the growth of data across cloud and on-premises environments. This is especially critical today as we see organisations face increasing pressure from investors, regulators, clients to reduce their carbon emissions,” said Alan Peacock, General Manager, IBM Cloud. “For IBM, reducing environmental impact to help create a more sustainable future is a top priority and we are committed to helping clients achieve both sustainability and business goals. With the AI-enabled IBM Cloud Carbon Calculator, we’re helping clients better understand the greenhouse gas emissions associated with their IT workloads and giving them the insights to adjust their strategies and further their sustainability objectives.”

Clients are already using the IBM Cloud Carbon Calculator to address their sustainability goals. This includes e.tres, an Argentinian ecommerce platform, who is using the dashboard to measure greenhouse gas emissions.

“The way people shop is changing, and we’re committed to helping our customers deliver frictionless online shopping experiences backed by high levels of sustainability. As we help our customers power their digital businesses with our innovative e-commerce platform, sustainability is at the centre of everything we do, with our e3Eco solution. With the IBM Cloud Carbon Calculator, enabled by AI, we can boost the sustainability of our clients’ operations, their technology and logistics shipments, so any ecommerce portal can become sustainable by measuring and offsetting greenhouse gas emissions.” said Diego Gorischnik, CEO of e.tres

The IBM Cloud Carbon Calculator is designed to give clients access to standards-based GHG emissions data for IBM Cloud workloads with just a few clicks. Its capabilities include:

·       Track emissions across various workloads down to the cloud service level for enterprise accounts: By helping deliver access to detailed GHG emissions data for their workloads on IBM Cloud, the tool is designed for clients to visualise and track GHG emissions associated with individual cloud services and locations, in accordance with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol. Clients can use filters to see emissions profiles across locations and a variety of services – starting with commonly used classic and cloud native infrastructure services, with more service coverage planned quarterly.

·       Identify GHG emissions hot-spots and opportunities for improvement: Clients can analyse emissions by month, quarter and year, enabling enterprises to gain a regular view of progress towards targets. Having access to emissions trends and patterns helps to uncover anomalies and hotspots, and clients can use the insights they gained to adjust their strategies in near real time to optimise workloads across locations and ultimately help reduce emissions.

·       Leverage data for GHG emission reports: Clients can access the output and audit trails generated by the IBM Cloud Carbon Calculator to help meet their reporting needs. Additionally, enterprises can integrate their emissions data into the IBM Envizi ESG suite3, which can help enhance their ability to conduct further analysis and reporting.

The availability of the IBM Cloud Carbon Calculator is a new milestone in our commitment to helping clients turn sustainability ambition into action and create a more energy efficient future. It complements IBM’s existing portfolio of sustainability solutions and consulting expertise, including the IBM Envizi ESG Suite, IBM Turbonomic, IBM Planning Analytics and IBM LinuxONE, that help organisations set, operationalise, and achieve their environmental sustainability goals.

Building on IBM and Intel’s deep commitment to helping enterprises solve their unique business challenges and prioritise their compute performance capabilities, IBM Cloud was among the first cloud providers to deliver Intel’s most sustainable data centre processors, 4th Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors, earlier this year. With energy efficiency innovations and designed to deliver superior performance, 4th Gen Intel Xeon processors can help IBM Cloud clients reduce GHG emissions associated with computing — with the performance being tracked via the IBM Cloud Carbon Calculator dashboard.

As companies embrace hybrid cloud, IBM Cloud and IBM Research plan to continue their close collaboration and work with its partners, such as Intel, to execute programs and activities aimed at helping clients reduce compute-related GHG emissions and increase energy efficiency.