Climate and Water report

Methodology for calculations Client ratio To allocate the emissions and water use to your data, we have used a client ratio. The client ratio is the customers’ share of the total designed IT-load, divided per hour. Our customers’ (your) scope 3 emissions are accounted for as our Scope 1 and 2 emissions. Below is a more detailed explanation of how we have allocated the emissions to each of the headings in the climate report.

This section will help you understand what type of data you find under each of the headings in the Climate and Water report, and how it has been calculated

Allocated GHG emissions for current month

These are EcoDataCenter’s scope 1 and 2 emissions for the most recent month.

Allocated GHG emissions for rolling 12 months

These emissions are aggregated from the most recent consecutive 12 months. The data should be reported as customers’ Scope 3, category 8 Upstream leased assets’ emissions if deemed significant by our customers.

Customers’ Scope 4 Avoided emissions – third-party reduced emissions

We spend a lot of energy making sure that our use of energy can also benefit others. This is why most of our datacenters are designed to share waste heat. Under this heading we allocate the avoided emissions from our partners thanks to our shared waste energy. The avoided emissions are allocated based on the sold waste heat corresponding to the client ratio of the customer. The avoided emissions come from waste heat sold to parties outside of our system boundaries and might be accounted for by others too. The waste heat is replacing the district heating.

Eco Data Center’s Scope 1 emissions -Direct emissions from fuels

Every month, we do test runs of the backup power, diesel generators, to ensure that they work. These emissions are allocated to each customer based on their client ratio. We report this data monthly and we have an ambition to phase out fossil fuels and replace them with HVO wherever it is possible.

Eco Data Center’s Scope 2 emissions - Indirect emissions from electricity

We allocate our market-based emissions from electricity to your energy use, but since we purchase renewable energy, and in this case use a market-based methodology (where you account the energy source you purchase and not the residual grid mix), these emissions will be zero. If you are interested in the location-based emissions for your data, please let us know. Direct customer power consumption is measured at the customer equipment interface. The power consumption in kWh is also what the customers pay for.

For our scope 3 emissions, what we call your E-liabilities, we have split the GHG emissions per month for the expected life span, and then applied the client ratio to get your share of them. We used an estimated life span of 50 years for the data centers, and an average life span for the installations in the data center (pods, racks, HVAC etc.) of 19 years since this was the average life span. We used EPDs to assess the carbon footprint of the equipment in the data centers, and the buildings were assessed using LCA methodology based on drawings and material data from the Swedish Boverket climate database.

For the other Scope 3 categories in the GHG Protocol (not 1 and 2), we take the company’s scope 3 emissions and allocate them to your client ratio.

Purchased goods and services (Our scope 3, category 1)

We have chosen to allocate the emissions from each individual datacenter building (Scope 3, Category 1) to the customers hosted there. We divided the embodied carbon from the building and construction works, by estimated kWh throughout the life span of the data centers. The life span for the buildings is expected to be 50 years. We then applied the client ratio to allocate the GHG emissions to our customers.

Capital goods – datacenter installations (Our scope 3, category 2)

We have chosen to allocate the emissions from each individual datacenter capital goods or installations (Scope 3, Category 2). Most of our scope 3 emissions come from the installations in the data center. These emissions are generated from extraction, processing, and manufacturing of all the equipment that keeps our customers’ servers in a nice environment and provides them with power. These emissions are based on EPDs or LCAs. The emissions from this category are divided per estimated month of lifetime and the average life span used is 19 years. The monthly figure is then divided as per the client ratio.

Upstream emissions of purchased fuels

This is our Scope 3, Category 3 Fuel- and energy-related activities allocated to your data. For the emissions to produce fuels such as diesel, HVO and EcoPar, we applied the upstream fuel emissions as per client ratio of the total use of fuels for test runs. We used the data from the suppliers or from Defra for upstream emissions, the same emission factors as we use for our third-party audited sustainability reporting.

Upstream emissions of purchased electricity

This is our Scope 3, Category 3 Fuel- and energy-related activities allocated to your data. To allocate the embodied carbon from the equipment that produced the power we use, we used an EPD from the Swedish utility Vattenfall for hydro power and wind power. We purchase 75% hydro and 25% wind power. We allocated this emission factor to the power used by each customer.

Transmission and distribution losses of electricity

This is our Scope 3, Category 3 Fuel- and energy-related activities allocated to your data. To allocate these emissions, we took the customers’ power use and allocated an extra 5% for losses. We used location-based emission factor of residual Nordic energy mix.

Business travel

To allocate our business travel emissions, we used the client ratio per year.

Employee commuting

To allocate our employee commuting, we used the client ratio per year.

Waste generated in operations

To allocate our waste generated in operations, we used the client ratio per year. This is our Scope 3, category 7 emissions allocated to your data.

Upstream transportation and distribution

To allocate upstream transportation and distribution emissions, we used LCAs or product carbon footprints of our data centers. We have allocated them per month of the life span of the building (50 years) per monthly client ratio. According to the GHG Protocol, this is our Scope 3, category 5 emissions allocated to your data.