Carbon Tracking
GreenKube’s carbon tracking converts your Kubernetes cluster’s energy consumption into CO₂ equivalent emissions using real-time electricity grid carbon intensity data.
The Problem
Section titled “The Problem”The EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) requires companies to disclose the carbon footprint of their entire value chain — including cloud infrastructure (Scope 3). Most organizations have no visibility into the emissions generated by their Kubernetes workloads.
How It Works
Section titled “How It Works”1. Energy Estimation
Section titled “1. Energy Estimation”GreenKube estimates the power consumption of each pod using a combination of:
- CPU utilization × node TDP (Thermal Design Power)
- Memory utilization × per-GB power coefficient
- GPU utilization × GPU TDP (when applicable)
- Network and disk I/O power overhead
2. Carbon Zone Mapping
Section titled “2. Carbon Zone Mapping”Each node is automatically mapped to a carbon zone based on its cloud provider and region. GreenKube includes built-in mappings for:
- AWS (all regions)
- Google Cloud Platform (all regions)
- Microsoft Azure (all regions)
- OVH Cloud
- Scaleway
3. Carbon Intensity
Section titled “3. Carbon Intensity”GreenKube fetches real-time carbon intensity (gCO₂/kWh) from Electricity Maps for each carbon zone. This means your emissions tracking reflects the actual energy mix of the grid powering your workloads.
4. Emissions Calculation
Section titled “4. Emissions Calculation”CO₂e (grams) = Energy (kWh) × Carbon Intensity (gCO₂/kWh)This is computed per pod, aggregated per namespace, and rolled up to the cluster level.
CSRD / ESRS E1 Compliance
Section titled “CSRD / ESRS E1 Compliance”GreenKube helps you meet ESRS E1 (Climate Change) disclosure requirements by providing:
| Requirement | GreenKube Feature |
|---|---|
| Scope 3 emissions (cloud) | Per-pod CO₂e calculation |
| Historical data | Time-series storage with configurable retention |
| Audit trail | Immutable metric snapshots with timestamps |
| Reporting formats | CSV, JSON export; API access |
| Methodology transparency | Open-source estimation models |
Configuration
Section titled “Configuration”To enable real-time carbon intensity, set your Electricity Maps API token:
# Helm values.yamlelectricityMaps: enabled: true token: "your-api-token"Without a token, GreenKube falls back to static carbon intensity averages per country — still useful, but less accurate.
Related
Section titled “Related”- Energy Estimation Methodology — Detailed power model
- Configuration Guide — All environment variables
- Reports & Exports — Generate CSRD-ready reports