Sustainability Language

Data, Technology & Verification Systems

Carbon-aware computing

Scheduling or relocating computing workloads to times and places where grid electricity is cleanest — cutting the carbon footprint of digital services without new hardware.

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Definition

The practice of adjusting when and where computation runs in response to the carbon intensity of electricity supply. Flexible workloads (batch processing, AI training, media encoding) are shifted toward hours or data-centre locations with lower grid carbon intensity, using carbon-intensity forecasts, while preserving service-level commitments.

References

Google (Radovanovic et al.)

System design; day-ahead carbon-intensity forecasts; virtual capacity curves; measured 1–2% power drops at peak-carbon hours.

Electricity Maps

Operational deployment; temporal and spatial workload shifting; 24/7 CFE linkage.

Overview

What it means

Pioneered at hyperscale by Google's Carbon-Intelligent Computing System (deployed from 2020; published 2021), carbon-aware computing exploits a fact of decarbonising grids: emissions per kWh vary hour to hour and region to region.

Google's fleet-wide implementation demonstrated measurable reductions in power draw at peak-carbon hours, and the approach pairs with the 24/7 carbon-free-energy goal of matching demand to clean supply every hour.

The concept has diffused into open-source practice via the Green Software Foundation's Carbon Aware SDK and into cloud carbon tooling, though measured effects remain modest where flexible load is a small share.

How it is used

Cloud providers and enterprises deploy carbon-aware schedulers; software engineers use carbon-intensity APIs (Electricity Maps, WattTime) to delay or relocate jobs; digital-sustainability reporting credits carbon-aware design as an operational mitigation measure.

Why it matters

As AI-driven compute demand surges, carbon-aware computing is one of the few levers that reduces digital emissions immediately, using the clean electricity already on the grid — a bridge to fully carbon-free operations.

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