Assessing the carbon footprint of the data transmission on a backbone network

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to assess the carbon footprint of data transmission on a network via a simplified Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. We did direct measures of the electricity consumption and the IP traffic of most of the devices required for the transmission between two sites on the backbone network. Our case study aims to compare two conditions for the data transmission, varying infrastructure density and network activity. The results for the peak day are 1.4 gCO2e/GB for the transmission across France and 2 gCO2e/GB for a more local transmission, and respectively 0.6 gCO2e/GB and 1.1 gCO2e/GB for an off-peak day.