Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced its new customer carbon footprint tool as part of The Climate Pledge.

The move builds on the firm’s commitment to achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2040, ten years ahead of the Paris Agreement. 

AWS’ customer carbon footprint tool, available for free, will help its cloud customers keep track of, measure, review, and forecast the carbon emissions associated with their use of AWS services. 

Enterprises can also monitor changes in emissions levels as they migrate workloads to AWS, upgrade applications, or retire obsolete resources. As a general rule, emissions are measured in metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, or MTCO2e. Carbon emissions data in the customer carbon footprint tool adhere to the Greenhouse Gas Protocol and ISO standards.

Emissions data is available from January 2020 onwards, according to AWS’ customer carbon footprint user guide.  There is a quarterly interval between data updates as AWS gathers and processes new information. The customer carbon footprint tool rounds all values to the nearest tenth of a metric ton.

To estimate emissions savings versus an equivalent on-premises workload, AWS draws upon data from 451 Research, which is a part of S&P Global Market Intelligence.

“After I share information about our efforts to decarbonize with our customers, they tell me that their organization is on a similar path, and that they need to know more about the carbon footprint of their cloud infrastructure,» commented Jeff Barr, chief evangelist for AWS. 

«Today I am happy to announce the new Customer Carbon Footprint Tool. This tool will help you to meet your own sustainability goals, and is available to all AWS customers at no cost,.