Calculating Our Carbon Footprint
Because we are focused so much on climate change-related software development, we thought it was important to measure and improve our own carbon footprint. Even though we are entirely remote development shop, we still generate business-related carbon pollution.
Students at University of Texas in Dallas gathered information from our team and the third party software and cloud providers we used, and then analyzed the results to produce a detailed carbon measurement of our impact. We are very thankful for their great effort and tangible results - our research indicates it is very uncommon for a small business to know its precise carbon footprint and we do now, thanks to them!
Our Annual Carbon Footprint
The students estimate that Deploy Solutions produces 2.25 MTCO2e of scope 1 and 2 carbon emissions, and 1.341 MTCO2e for scope 3 services (mostly cloud infrastructure and SaaS), or about 3.591 metric tons of carbon annually.
How It Was Calculated
This amount does not include our staff's personal carbon footprints, but only the footprint created by entirely business-related activities. (Canada has one of the highest per person carbon footprints in the world, at 15.5 metric tonnes per year). This calculation also does not include some 3rd party services which did not provide any carbon footprint information. However our use of them is relatively small and so we are confident the estimate is an accurate one.
Some of the interesting findings:
- Since we are remote software developers, our "workplace" carbon impact is the same as an individual home resident, and carbon calculators such as those produced by the EPA or power generation companies are surprisingly useful to measure and plan carbon footprint reductions.
- The two major cloud service providers we use, Microsoft and Amazon Web Services, provided the most information on carbon footprint. Microsoft's level of detail is the gold standard.
- By choosing to build and deploy our software in only carbon-neutral data centres, we can leverage the ongoing investments Microsoft and Amazon make in creating Net Zero data centres and services.
- According to Environment Canada's recent standard, we produce $994/year of carbon footprint "carbon cost to society". Again, we're a small company producing digital goods, and yet we still have that much negative impact!
Our Net Zero Pledge
We pledge to achieve Net Zero each operating year, beginning this year (FYE2024). We will accomplish this by following our established carbon net zero plan. Activities include:
- Improving our carbon emissions data (especially scope 3 services)
- Analyzing our carbon footprint consistently and monitoring changes in use over time
- Avoiding, where possible, carbon producing activities and services and reducing what we cannot avoid
- Offsetting carbon via (certified/real) offsetting projects and services
- Informing and educating our staff, partners, and other stakeholders in our efforts and progress
