Carbon Leaderboard

The goal was to collect and compare the estimated carbon impact of physical and virtual servers, encouraging greater awareness of the environmental impact of computing resources.

What was done

We developed a carbon leaderboard using a helper script to collect anonymous server specifications and location data. Integrated the Boavizta API to estimate carbon impact using GWP, and explored how to estimate the impact of virtual machines across platforms such as AWS and OpenStack.

What was learnt

We learnt how to collect server data, integrate carbon estimation APIs and compare the environmental impact of different computing resources. We also explored the challenges of estimating virtual server impact, particularly when information about underlying hardware and CPU topology is limited.