The following case studies were developed from March to September 2026 by members of the Carbon Calculation Support Group. In March 2026 the DPC made a draft of the Carbon Footprint Toolkit available for community comment and testing. In order to fulfil a dual goal of gathering feedback about the toolkit and generating case studies, the DPC brought a small group together to meet monthly to work on using the Toolkit to carry out their own carbon calculations. Members of this new Carbon Calculation Support Group were not required to have any prior experience in this area, just an interest in the topic and enthusiasm to work on the challenge and share their knowledge and experiences.
Some of the members of the Carbon Calculation Support Group at our last meetings in September 2026.
Over a six-month period, group members met online every month and discussed how they were using the Toolkit. Participants shared challenges, successes and lessons learned, as well as providing valuable feedback on the Toolkit and helping to test and refine the Carbon Footprint Calculation Tool itself. Participants were able to learn from each other and discover shared challenges as well as providing support and advice to each other based on their own experiences. Alicia Wise of CLOCKSS chaired the sessions and provided valuable advice and encouragement along the way.
Carbon footprint calculation can be a complex and challenging area, typically involving a substantial amount of time and effort, as well as the input of colleagues and third-party service providers. It was recognised that it wasn’t realistic for group members to complete a full carbon footprint calculation for all of their digital preservation activities in this six-month period, but it was hoped that everyone would be able to make progress in a particular area and to be able to share those learnings back with the community. What follows is a series of case studies from group members covering a range of different areas and perspectives on their work over the last six months. These should not be viewed as complete and polished examples of carbon footprint calculations, rather as a set of examples of works in progress, describing what has been accomplished so far and where they see this work going next.
We would like to thank all the members of the Carbon Calculation Support Group for working with us on this task.
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Assessing the carbon footprint of cloud-services at a medium-sized institution - Kelli Bogan, George Washington’s Mount Vernon
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Building Interoperability with the Carbon Footprint Toolkit into the Hamilton Public Library’s Local History and Archives Department’s Digital Preservation System - Jack O’Grady, Collections and Digital Access Specialist at Hamilton Public Library
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Measuring the Carbon Footprint of Digital Preservation Activities using Permafrost: A Case Study with Wilfrid Laurier University and Scholars Portal - Amanda Oliver, Wilfrid Laurier University & Julie Shi, Scholars Portal
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Calculation of the carbon footprint of digital archiving activity at Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision in Aotearoa New Zealand - Kate Roberts (with input from Preservation and Property Operations colleagues at Ngā Taonga; Dan Eady, Luke Tearle and Steve Hutchinson), Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision
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Measuring the Carbon Footprint of a SaaS Preservation Repository at the University of Melbourne - Dr Eva Samaras and Elise Bradshaw, University of Melbourne
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What we learned from measuring the carbon footprint of comparative software infrastructure - Jemma Singleton, Newcastle University Library
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What we learned from measuring the carbon footprint of the CLOCKSS archive – Alicia Wise, CLOCKSS