Carbon free energy for Google Cloud regions

In choosing which Google Cloud region to host your application, there are multiple considerations:

Latency to your end users can be different from one region to the next.
The price of services differs from region to region.
The electricity used to power your application might have a different carbon intensity.

This document explains how to include carbon emissions characteristics into the location choice for your Google Cloud services.

A carbon-free cloud for our customers

To power each Google Cloud region, we use electricity from the grid where the region is located. This electricity generates more or less carbon emissions (gCO₂eq), depending on the type of power plants generating electricity for that grid and when we consume it. We recently set a goal to match our energy consumption with carbon-free energy (CFE), every hour and in every region by 2030.

As we work towards our 2030 goal, we want to empower our customers to leverage our 24/7 carbon free energy efforts and consider the carbon impact of where they locate their applications. To characterize each region we use a metric: "CFE%". This metric is calculated for every hour and tells us what percentage of the energy we consumed during an hour that is carbon-free, based on two elements:

The generation feeding the grid at that time (which power plants are running)
Google-attributed clean energy produced onto that grid during that time.

We aggregate the available average hourly CFE percentage for each Google Cloud region for the year and have provided the latest data below.

Understanding the data

Google CFE%: This is the average percentage of carbon free energy consumed in a particular location on an hourly basis, while taking into account the investments we have made in carbon-free energy in that location. This means that in addition to the carbon free energy that's already supplied by the grid, we have added carbon-free energy generation in that location to reach our 24/7 carbon free energy objective. As a customer, this represents the average percentage of time your application will be running on carbon-free energy.

Grid carbon intensity (gCO₂eq/kWh): This metric indicates the average operational gross emissions per unit of energy from the grid. This metric should be used to compare the regions in terms of carbon intensity of their electricity from the local grid. For regions that are similar in CFE%, this will indicate the relative emissions for when your workload is not running on carbon free energy.

Carbon data across Google Cloud regions

Google Cloud Region	Location	Google CFE%	Grid carbon intensity (gCO₂eq/kWh)
africa-south1	Johannesburg	16%	646
asia-east1	Taiwan	18%	451
asia-east2	Hong Kong	28%	360
asia-northeast1	Tokyo	16%	459
asia-northeast2	Osaka	30%	385
asia-northeast3	Seoul	35%	378
asia-south1	Mumbai	14%	648
asia-south2	Delhi	29%	529
asia-southeast1	Singapore	4%	369
asia-southeast2	Jakarta	13%	580
australia-southeast1	Sydney	33%	501
australia-southeast2	Melbourne	40%	456
europe-central2	Warsaw	31%	723
europe-north1	Finland	98%	46	Low CO₂
europe-southwest1	Madrid	76%	131	Low CO₂
europe-west1	Belgium	82%	122	Low CO₂
europe-west2	London	92%	136	Low CO₂
europe-west3	Frankfurt	90%	345	Low CO₂
europe-west4	Netherlands	80%	236	Low CO₂
europe-west6	Zurich	92%	59	Low CO₂
europe-west8	Milan	52%	249
europe-west9	Paris	94%	34	Low CO₂
europe-west10	Berlin	90%	345	Low CO₂
europe-west12	Turin	52%	249
me-central1	Doha	0%	575
me-central2	Dammam	0%	569
me-west1	Tel Aviv	5%	463
northamerica-northeast1	Montréal	100%	2	Low CO₂
northamerica-northeast2	Toronto	87%	47	Low CO₂
southamerica-east1	Sāo Paulo	90%	56	Low CO₂
southamerica-west1	Santiago	91%	138	Low CO₂
us-central1	Iowa	95%	430	Low CO₂
us-east1	South Carolina	29%	560
us-east4	Northern Virginia	52%	322
us-east5	Columbus	52%	322
us-south1	Dallas	79%	321	Low CO₂
us-west1	Oregon	84%	94	Low CO₂
us-west2	Los Angeles	55%	198
us-west3	Salt Lake City	29%	588
us-west4	Las Vegas	26%	373

* indicates that we do not currently have the hourly energy information available for calculating the metrics. For these regions, we will roll out the metrics once the hourly data becomes available.

Find the same data in a machine readable format on GitHub or as a BigQuery public dataset.

The hourly grid mix and carbon intensity data used to calculate these metrics is from Electricity Maps. This data has not been assured.

How to incorporate carbon free energy in your location strategy

Be sure to consider the other best practices for choosing resource locations like data residency requirements, latency to your end users, redundancy of the application, and price of the services available.

To use the CFE data above, here are some good ideas to get you started:

Pick a cleaner region for your new applications. If you are going to run an application over time, running in the region with the highest CFE% will emit the lowest carbon emissions.
Run batch jobs on the cleanest option. Batch workloads often have the benefit of planning. You should pick the region with the highest CFE% available to you.
Set an organizational policy for low carbon locations. You can restrict the location of your resources to a particular Google Cloud region or subset of regions using the "Resource Location Restriction" organization policy. Dedicated "low carbon" value groups have been created to enable you to restrict locations with low carbon impact. For example, if you want to use only US-based regions, use the "Low carbon United States" (in:us-low-carbon-locations) value group.

Low carbon indicators

Some location pages on the Google Cloud website and location selectors in the Google Cloud console display " leaf icon Low CO₂" next to locations that have the lowest carbon impact. The "Resource Location Restriction" organization policy offers "low carbon" value groups.

For a location to be considered "low carbon", it must belong to a region with a Google CFE% of at least 75%, or, if CFE% information is not available, a grid carbon intensity of maximum 200 gCO₂eq/kWh.