Perfection is the enemy of the good here. Not all data are equal, and spending a lot of time and energy gathering really detailed data might contribute more to your carbon footprint than it would ever save.
Prioritize the most significant digital preservation activities or product/service for your organization. Focus on measuring those activities that you think might utilize the most hardware and/or energy. Note that the NDSA Levels of Digital Preservation Environmental Sustainability Guide provides some helpful guidance on which areas of digital preservation activity have the most impact. You can then fine tune your calculations by focusing on less significant activities as time allows.
There is some data you’ll need to gather within your organization, and some data that you’ll need to ask cloud service providers to provide. In larger organizations, there may also be internal virtual clusters or clouds. You may need to consider installing electricity monitors on key devices to gather the data. You may need to ask IT colleagues to do this for you. Any internal advocacy work you have done may help move things forward – review the Getting organizational buy-in section for a refresher.
If you can’t gather the relevant data, you will need to estimate or use a proxy. Remember to record the source of the information and how confident you are in this data. The calculation tool provides space to record this information, and this can be helpful when interpreting and reporting on the calculations. Note that we have also provided some helpful proxy information in the calculation tool.
Entering your data
Now it's time to populate the Carbon Footprint Calculation Tool. Remember you may fill out as much or as little of the spreadsheet as you wish. Do not feel you have to tackle every one of the sections (or spreadsheet tabs) in order to find out something meaningful. Carrying out this work takes time, energy and collaboration so take it one step at a time, starting with a specific task or goal, and building out as confidence and/or capacity grows.