What is Carbon Footprint?
Carbon Footprint is a free dashboard in the Google Cloud Console that transparently displays the estimated greenhouse gas emissions of the Google Cloud services you use. Calculation happens automatically with no additional setup; prior-month data is available with a delay of up to 21 days.
Emissions are broken down according to the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHGP) standards into Scope 1, Scope 2, and Scope 3. For Scope 2, both a market-based and a location-based view are available. An independent review confirmed that the methodology provides a reasonable basis for calculating and allocating emissions from Google Cloud products.
The tool helps organizations with sustainability reporting and enables informed decisions to reduce cloud-related carbon footprint, such as choosing lower-emission regions.
Core Features
- Emissions calculation: Automatic calculation of greenhouse gas emissions per billing account, project, and service
- Scope breakdown: Reporting by Scope 1, Scope 2 (market-based and location-based), and Scope 3 per the GHG Protocol
- BigQuery export: Export emissions data to BigQuery for your own analysis, dashboards, and reporting workflows
- Historical data: Temporal development of emissions for trend analysis
Typical Use Cases
ESG and Sustainability Reporting
Organizations use Carbon Footprint to include cloud-related emissions in their ESG reports and sustainability strategies. The underlying methodology follows the GHG Protocol standard.
Emissions Optimization
IT teams factor in the emission intensity of individual Google Cloud regions when choosing locations for workloads with flexible region selection, thereby reducing the carbon footprint.
Benefits
- Free for all Google Cloud customers
- Emissions data based on the recognized, externally reviewed GHG Protocol standard
- Export to BigQuery for custom analysis and reporting integration
- Support for regulatory reporting obligations
Integration with innFactory
As a certified Google Cloud partner, innFactory supports you with Carbon Footprint: sustainability strategy for cloud workloads, region optimization, and integrating emissions data into ESG reporting workflows.
Typical Use Cases
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Carbon Footprint?
Carbon Footprint is a free dashboard in the Google Cloud Console that calculates and visualizes the estimated greenhouse gas emissions of the Google Cloud services used under a billing account. It supports sustainability reporting.
How are emissions calculated?
Google calculates emissions according to the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHGP) standards, broken down into Scope 1, Scope 2 (market-based and location-based), and Scope 3. The methodology has been externally reviewed and is documented transparently.
Can I use Carbon Footprint for ESG reports?
Yes, data can be exported to BigQuery for analysis, custom dashboards, or integration with your organization's emissions accounting tools. Reports follow the GHG Protocol standard.
Does Carbon Footprint incur additional costs?
Using the Carbon Footprint dashboard itself is free. Exporting to BigQuery and processing the data there may incur standard BigQuery costs.
Note: All product information on this page has been compiled with care, but is provided without guarantee and may be outdated or incomplete. Cloud services evolve rapidly — features, pricing, SLAs, and availability change frequently. Authoritative and up-to-date information can only be found on the official product page of Google Cloud (official documentation). This page does not represent an offer by Google Cloud.
