The Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) today releases a draft version of its new Carbon Footprint Toolkit for community comment and testing.
The Toolkit provides a practical methodology to help organizations calculate the carbon footprint of their digital preservation activities. Designed to support a wide range of organizations, regardless of size, sector, geography, or prior experience, it also includes a Carbon Footprint Calculation Tool to support carbon footprint calculations in practice.
The Toolkit was developed by the DPC Carbon Footprint Task Force, which met monthly throughout 2025. Inspired by the DIMPACT methodology for carbon calculation, it was adapted specifically for digital preservation contexts.
“The DPC's 170+ members in 20+ countries identified environmental sustainability of digital preservation as a key topic of shared interest, and it has been an honour to chair the talented task and finish group convened to develop a toolkit on calculating the carbon footprint of digital preservation activities,” said Alicia Wise, Executive Director of CLOCKSS who chaired the DPC Carbon Footprint Task Force. “We drew on experience from Canada, Finland, the Netherlands, the UK, and the US to deliver a guide that will help you no matter what stage of the journey you are on. Please join us on this journey, and we will be delighted to evolve the toolkit based on your implementation experiences!”
The draft Toolkit is available to everyone via this Google document, which is open for comments now.
Call for participants: Carbon Calculation Support Group
As part of this initial comment and testing phase, the DPC is also looking to form a small working group of representatives from organizations interested in measuring the carbon footprint of their own digital preservation activities.
Participants do not need to be from DPC member organizations, and no prior experience with carbon footprint calculations is necessary. However, members of the group should be able to meet monthly over the next six months, have capacity to test the Toolkit during that period, and be willing to share case studies that may be published alongside the final version.
Those interested in joining the Carbon Calculation Support Group are invited to complete the expression of interest form by 10 April 2026.
Following this period of community feedback and testing, the Toolkit will be finalized and fully published in September 2026.
If you have any comments about the toolkit, please let us know via our feedback form.