Introduction
To support Nordic Institute for Interoperability Solution’s (NIIS) mission on making X-Road the ‘most sustainable data exchange solution in the world’, a study is being carried out by Gofore and Stockholm Environment Institute Tallinn to assess the carbon impacts of the solution. In the first stage we defined the scope of the project and described what would and wouldn’t be included. We have proceeded a step further and developed a unique emissions calculator that measures the carbon footprint of X-Road’s operations. The calculator was built using data from instances in Estonia and Finland but is comprehensive enough to perform calculations for any instance residing in any region.
From energy to emissions
The methodology proceeded in two stages. First, the team developed a model to understand the electricity burden of operating an X-Road Security Server. Once the electricity consumption of one Security Server was determined, the results were multiplied with the total number of Security Servers in an entire X-Road ecosystem. Next, this was converted into an estimation of released emissions by multiplying this value by an ‘emission factor’ for grid electricity. The emission factor describes the emissions for each unit of electricity and considers all the different sources of electricity generation within a country or region. This is important as the content of this ‘electricity mix’ can be wildly different between different countries, leading to very different emissions outcomes for the same energy use. Results are reported in units of CO2 equivalent (CO2e), which includes other important greenhouse gases, such as methane. For these calculations, emission factors published by Association of Issuing Bodies (AIB) for 2019 are used.
The model
This model was refined in subsequent steps based on new literature findings, updated assumptions testing among the internal team, and interviews with end-users and industry experts. As it is not possible to investigate every single source of emissions within a single project, it is important to focus on the largest that will define the size of the carbon footprint. As such, three main sources of emission were identified: infrastructure, data transaction and data storage. In this context, the ‘infrastructure’ component only included the Security Server which is required to process data and enable secure data exchange. The team hypothesized this would be the main source of emissions, since multiple processors can collectively contribute vast amounts of heat emission and energy consumption. To compensate, data storage was considered as a separate component to account for the recording of all the transactions occurring over X-Road servers.
Infrastructure
The main physical infrastructure that enables secure data exchange through X-Road is the Security Server. For simplification, only CPU and RAM are considered as these components are responsible for almost all the energy consumption in a security server. A Fujitsu server with a model “FUJITSU Server PRIMERGY RX1330 M4 is assumed to be a standard server throughout the calculations. This serves as a good representation of a sample server employed across the two instances based on surveys conducted with the Finnish and Estonian authorities. The server employs an Intel® Xeon® E-2288G Processor with 16M Cache, 3.70 GHz and 8 cores, and was published in the database in 2019. Values for the energy use of this server were obtained from a widely used published database, SPECpower_ssj2008.
The processor’s energy consumption can be modelled as a directly proportional relationship between CPU utilization and Average Active Power. In turn, the RAM energy consumption model is based on a study conducted by Pedro H. P. Castro et al. The RAM’s power consumption is divided into background power (depends only on memory states and on the frequency of the operation) and operational power (product of memory bandwidth and the power required to run a particular command). The total power consumption was taken as the sum of these two individual components.
A final factor to consider is the energy consumption of the supporting infrastructure. This is widely considered in the industry through a factor known as the power use effectiveness (PUE). PUE describes the amount of energy used by the IT devices compared to the amount used by the supporting infrastructure (in this project a PUE of 1.58 was used). Thus, the total energy consumption of a Security Server is calculated as a product of total electricity consumption and PUE.
Transaction
Work by Aslan et al pointed to an average data transmission efficiency of 0.06 kWh /GB for fixed line transmission, a value that was also seen empirically to half every 2 years. For 2021, including the expected efficiency gains, this value is found to be 0.0075 kWh of electricity consumed for 1 GB of data transferred over the local internet. The methodology simply involves taking the product of the total amount of data exchanged over X-Road and the electricity consumption per GB of data transferred.
Storage
According to bilateral exchange of information with different X-Road members, data is stored in hard disk drives (HDDs). A study conducted by Adam Lewis et al from Athens state university outlines a comprehensive approach that enables accurate energy consumption calculations of data storage in an HDD. For calculating the energy consumption of data storage, an HDD’s start up power, power consumption during data writing, power consumption in idle mode and finally, power consumption in standby mode is all calculated and summed.
Carbon footprint results
The following table summarizes the total emissions of the Estonian and Finnish instances.
Table 1. Estimated carbon footprint summary of X-Road operations in Estonia and Finland.
The total carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) emissions for Estonia amount up to 45,685 kgs and for Finland up to 22,593 kgs. The results include emissions from all three main operations (i.e., infrastructure, transaction and storage). Although the Finnish instance has a lot more Security Servers than the Estonian instance (173 in Estonia and 290 in Finland), the disparity in the electricity emission factor (0.723 kg of CO2e/kWh for Estonia and 0.136 kg of CO2e/kWh for Finland) is the key reason for the contrast between the aggregated emission amounts of both regions. A comparison between the emissions of the three main operations allows us to identify and analyse areas which contribute most significantly to the total emissions. Resulting emissions from the electricity consumption are depicted in figure below.
Figure 1. Emission by main operations in the Finnish and Estonian instances
The electricity consumption (and therefore emissions) by the Security Servers in comparison to data transaction and storage is substantially high and dominates the total share. Emissions from servers contribute to 96% of the total emissions which amount to 21,617 kgs of CO2e for the Finnish instance and 43,999 kgs of CO2e for the Estonian instance. This directly points to the primary place of focus in order to make X-Road’s operations more sustainable. Data storage contributes to a mere 3% that amount to 1,507 kgs of CO2e for Estonia and 950 kgs of CO2e for Finland. The remaining are from data transaction (less than 1%) for both instances.
In conclusion, the calculator depicts a holistic view of the total emissions due to X-Road’s operations. For the scope of this project, calculations are done for Estonia and Finland though the calculator is configurable for any instance in any region. This methodology aims to cater emission calculations to the key areas which emerge to have the greatest emissions, and to be flexible to the different circumstances used by X-road members. As there are hundreds of different Security Servers and storage devices spread all across Finland and Estonia, it is impossible to track down exact models of the components with their corresponding power consumption specifications and data exchange numbers. We therefore hope our approach strikes the ideal balance between accuracy and flexibility.
We welcome your feedback on the methodology and results and will shortly publish more details in a formal report. The next stage of the project will develop a series of recommendations for NIIS and X-Road members to ensure carbon emissions are minimized without compromising the effectiveness of the X-Road service.
Adil Aslam is a Junior Expert At SEI Tallinn and joined the Climate and Energy programme in November 2020.
Adil has diverse experience in manufacturing, energy consultancy, modelling and project management. He is an expert in conventional and renewable energy systems while being proficient in a whole range of energy simulation software. He is adept in programming and has used Python and Matlab to develop various energy models. His interests lie in energy systems, sector coupling, green finance, sustainable business models, electricity markets and simulations.
He is currently working on simulating hydrogen potential in Estonia, climate neutral scenarios for 2050 and providing his expertise in various energy related projects. He actively takes part in the company’s business development operations and aims to explore different business opportunties.
He graduated from Technische Universität Berlin, Germany in 2020 with a Master’s in Business Engineering Energy. He did his Master’s thesis at Forschungszentrum Julich (one of the largest interdisciplinary research centres in Europe) and the Institut für Stromrichtertechnik und Elektrische Antriebe (ISEA) RWTH, where he worked on modelling an energy management system for residential PV home systems to sustain blackouts.