A Clean Slate for the Network

Cloudflare has made two new commitments aimed at cutting its environmental impact. The company is formally pledging to power its entire network with 100% renewable energy, a step that continues and formalizes work begun in 2018. Alongside that ongoing effort, Cloudflare has set a target of removing or offsetting all greenhouse gases emitted by its network operations since the company's launch in 2010, with a goal of completing that work by 2025.

To back up those pledges, the company is publishing its first annual carbon emissions inventory report, documenting how emissions are calculated and how renewable energy purchases are made. The move is part of a broader push to build a greener Internet, an effort Cloudflare believes will ultimately lead to more efficient and sustainable products for its customers.

How Renewable Energy Purchases Work

For a company to claim it runs on 100% renewable energy, it must match its total energy consumption with electricity generated from renewable sources. These commitments are governed by international standards such as the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol and ISO 14064, the same frameworks used by governments for reporting emissions under treaties like the Paris Climate Agreement. Voluntary guidelines, like the RE100 initiative, also shape corporate best practices in this area.

Companies have several ways to buy renewable energy that meets these standards, including:

  • Generating their own power via rooftop solar panels or wind turbines
  • Signing contracts with wind or solar farms, such as Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs)
  • Purchasing unbundled Renewable Energy Credits (RECs)
  • Buying through local utilities like CleanPowerSF in San Francisco

The intent of these varied options is to channel as much investment as possible into new renewable sources. Because electricity flows through shared grids, it is physically impossible for an individual consumer to know whether they are using conventional or renewable power. The accounting systems and standards, however, allow organizations of any size to track and benefit from their investments in renewable energy, even when the actual power delivered comes from the standard electrical grid.

The impact of such investment is measurable. According to the IEA, global renewable energy capacity grew by 45% in 2020, the largest annual increase since 1997. Internet Communications Technology (ICT) companies have accounted for nearly half of all corporate renewable energy investment over the last five years.

Tracking Usage and Purchases

Cloudflare's new pledge means the company will continue to match 100% of its global energy usage with renewable sources. Although the company made its first renewable energy purchase in 2018 and matched its total global operations in both 2019 and 2020, the new forward-looking commitment is designed to give customers, investors, employees, and suppliers confidence that the network will be built on renewable energy going forward.

To calculate how much renewable energy to procure, Cloudflare splits its electricity usage into two categories: network and facilities. For the network, data is pulled from all servers and networking equipment worldwide twice a year. For offices, the company records actual energy usage where it has access to utility bills, per the GHG Protocol. In multi-tenant buildings where individual bills aren't available, Cloudflare relies on energy usage intensity (EUI) estimates from the U.S. Energy Information Agency.

Cloudflare's renewable energy purchases currently come in two main forms. The vast majority are RECs sourced through partner 3Degrees to stay aligned with standards like the GHG Protocol. In 2020, to match network usage, Cloudflare purchased RECs, I-RECs, REGOs, and other energy attribute certificates from the United States, United Kingdom, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, India, Malaysia, Mexico, Hungary, Romania, Ukraine, Bulgaria, South Africa, and Turkey, among others. While the company has previously used a regional purchasing strategy, it expects to be fully aligned with all RE100 criteria, including market boundary criteria, by the end of 2021.

Reconstructing Historical Emissions

Meeting the 2025 goal of removing all historical network emissions requires two steps: first, determining exactly how much carbon was emitted to power the network from 2010 to 2019, and second, investing in carbon offsets or removals to match that total.

Calculating emissions from purchased electricity is essentially a unit conversion:

Energy (KWH) x Emissions Factor (gC02e/KWH) = Carbon emissions (gC02e)

The accuracy of this calculation hinges on the emissions factors used. These factors measure the amount of GHGs emitted by a specific power supplier per unit of energy created. For reporting purposes, GHGs are those defined by the 1992 Kyoto Protocol: carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, and sulphur hexafluoride. These six gases are often reported as a single figure, "carbon-dioxide equivalent" or "CO2e," based on each gas's Global Warming Potential (GWP). Emissions factors from individual power sources are frequently combined and averaged to create grid average factors for cities, regions, or countries. Following the GHG Protocol, Cloudflare uses factors from the U.S. EPA, U.K. DEFRA, and IEA.

For the annual inventory report released today, Cloudflare calculates carbon emissions scores for every data center in its network. This involves multiplying actual energy usage by the grid average emissions factors in each of the more than 100 countries where the company operates equipment. The report lays out the details of this methodology.

For historical data, Cloudflare has exact figures only back to 2018, the year of its first renewable energy purchase. To reconstruct usage before that, the company is reviewing purchasing, shipping, energy usage, and colocation agreements to determine how much energy was consumed and when. While no final historical calculation is available yet, the company says it will share results as it begins working with organizations focused on carbon removal efforts.

Expanding Climate Efforts

The renewable energy commitment is not the end of Cloudflare's climate work. In addition to the 100% renewable pledge and historical emissions removal, the company is exploring new products that leverage its network for better climate outcomes. Examples already in motion include Green Compute on Cloudflare Workers, which routes some workloads to renewable energy facilities, and Carbon Impact Reports, which help customers optimize their own carbon footprint.