Cloud Carbon Emissions: accurate measurement, effective reductions

Tailpipe accurately measures your organisation’s carbon emissions from cloud computing, suggesting cost-effective reduction methods without impacting performance. Accurate, granular, comprehensive, timely and transparent, Tailpipe helps save costs and decrease your carbon footprint.

TRY THE FREE TAILPIPE EMISSIONS ESTIMATOR HERE

Cloud Carbon Emissions: accurate measurement, effective reductions

Tailpipe accurately measures your organisation’s carbon emissions from cloud computing, suggesting cost-effective reduction methods without impacting performance. Accurate, granular, comprehensive, timely and transparent, Tailpipe helps save costs and decrease your carbon footprint.

TRY THE FREE TAILPIPE EMISSIONS ESTIMATOR HERE

How Tailpipe Works

In a world where operational efficiency and reducing carbon emissions converge, Tailpipe offers unparalleled transparency, accuracy and comprehensive emissions calculations for organisations navigating the complexities of cloud computing. Tailpipe has been created by Environmental and Computer Scientists with more than two decades’ experience in designing low carbon computing infrastructure and delivering advanced cloud computing systems. Tailpipe currently supports AWS; Azure and GCP are coming soon.

Tailpipe offers accurate and comprehensive carbon emission measurements, across cloud computing services, locations, projects, components and their lifecycle stages, alongside recommendations to reduce both costs and carbon emissions. The energy used by, and carbon emissions from, cloud computing in data centers is growing globally.

Worldwide, many organisations that have made commitments to achieve Net Zero within the next few years are heavy users of cloud computing. This means that it is essential to get accurate and comprehensive carbon emissions measurements from cloud computing usage.

Tailpipe, using a methodology aligned with the global standard for calculating Software Carbon Intensity, ISO21031:2024, provides easy-to-understand dashboards and easy-to-integrate APIs that deliver an organisation’s cloud computing carbon emissions by service, by location, by project, and by component and their lifecycle stage, including embodied emissions.

Tailpipe then provides recommendations to help you reduce carbon emissions and lower costs.

Recommendations

Only by understanding your carbon emissions from cloud computing can you reduce them without causing performance issues. Tailpipe provides a series of recommendations that can help reduce both cloud computing’s carbon emissions and cloud costs. You then decide whether to implement them.

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Accuracy

Tailpipe obtains data from cloud providers, silicon vendors, and equipment manufacturers, enhances it with regional electricity carbon intensity data, and securely processes it using proprietary algorithms adhering to ISO 21031:2024 to generate accurate embodied and operational cloud emissions data.

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Comprehensiveness

It’s important that all the carbon emissions from cloud computing are included in the data that Tailpipe provides. That’s why Tailpipe determines both the carbon emissions from the operational usage of cloud computing, and the embodied emissions from the equipment’s manufacture and disposal.

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Transparency

Tailpipe offers a transparent methodology for calculating all cloud usage emissions, enabling customers to understand its full derivation and data sources. Emissions data is presented by cloud computing component for an accurate understanding of where emissions are being generated.

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Frequently Asked Questions

If you have further queries, you can get in touch with us here

What is Tailpipe, and how does it help organisations reduce the environmental impact of their cloud computing services?

Tailpipe is a software solution that uses billing and usage data from your cloud service provider (CSP), combines it with other data from the CSP and other third parties (including our own research) to accurately measure your organisation’s carbon emissions from cloud computing. Tailpipe is then able to suggest cost-effective carbon reduction methods without impacting performance.

What types of cloud services and organisations can benefit from using Tailpipe?

Today, Tailpipe supports Amazon Web Services customers, so any organisation that uses AWS could save money and reduce carbon emissions by using Tailpipe.

How does Tailpipe measure or calculate an organisation's carbon emissions related to their cloud computing usage?

Tailpipe obtains data from cloud providers, silicon vendors, and equipment manufacturers, enhances it with regional electricity carbon intensity data, and securely processes it using proprietary algorithms adhering to ISO 21031:2024 to generate accurate embodied and operational cloud emissions data.

What are some specific actions or features of Tailpipe that help reduce the carbon footprint of cloud computing, such as optimisation of workloads, virtualisation, or automation?

Tailpipe can assess your organisation’s usage of the cloud, comparing its architecture today to alternative scenarios such as migrating cloud services to data centers with lower carbon intensity or using more energy efficient cloud infrastructure. Tailpipe’s recommendations are designed to reduce carbon and lower costs without impacting performance.

What is the cost and pricing structure for using Tailpipe, including any potential savings from reduced resource consumption and carbon offsetting?

There are a number of different models to purchase a Tailpipe subscription – get in touch here and the team would be happy to talk to you to find what’s right for you.

How does Tailpipe handle data privacy and security for its clients' information during the carbon footprint assessment and reduction process?

Data security and privacy is very important to Tailpipe, and its parent company, Tivarri. No personal data is stored nor processed by Tailpipe to calculate the carbon emissions from cloud computing. As user login and authentication is handled by your organisation’s single sign on capabilities, this also means that Tailpipe doesn’t store any usernames or passwords. Tailpipe is built and operated by Tivarri who are ISO27001 certified for Information Security Management Systems and also UK Government Cyber Essentials Certified (the standard defined by the UK National Cyber Security Centre).

Does Tailpipe offer any certifications or comply with industry standards for environmental sustainability in cloud computing, such as ISO 14001 or Carbon Trust Standard?

Tailpipe has been designed and built in line with ISO 21031:2024, the international standard for calculating the Carbon Intensity of Software. Tailpipe is developed and operated by Tivarri who are ISO 27001 certified for Information Security Management Systems and also UK Government Cyber Essentials Certified (the standard defined by the UK National Cyber Security Centre).

How is Tailpipe better than solutions that look at allocating carbon emissions based on the amount we’ve spent in the cloud?

As Tailpipe uses real operational data, including the precise utilisation of every server used, the carbon emissions numbers generated by Tailpipe are far more accurate and precise than a spend-based conversion.

How does Tailpipe keep up with new products, services and infrastructure from the cloud service providers?

On a monthly basis, Tailpipe updates all the reference data used as an input into the calculations to take account of any updates from the cloud service providers.