Export and Visualize Carbon Emissions Data from Your AWS Accounts
In an era where sustainability is more than just a buzzword, understanding and managing carbon emissions has become crucial for businesses around the world. In April 2025, Amazon Web Services (AWS) introduced a groundbreaking feature aimed at elevating this understanding: the ability to export carbon emissions data using AWS Data Exports. This invaluable addition to the AWS toolkit empowers companies to track their carbon footprints with precision and clarity. Let’s explore this feature, its implementation, and how it helps organizations make informed decisions towards sustainability.
A Step Forward in Cloud Sustainability: AWS Carbon Emissions Data Export
In March 2022, AWS introduced the Customer Carbon Footprint Tool (CCFT), offering customers insights into the carbon emissions associated with their cloud usage. Fast forward to April 2025, and AWS has taken this concept several steps further by integrating carbon emissions data into AWS Data Exports. This enables users to automatically export detailed emissions data with the granularity of AWS Account and Region on a monthly basis to Amazon S3, ranging across all AWS Organizations linked to management accounts.
The Path to Exporting and Visualizing Carbon Emissions
Understanding your carbon footprint in cloud operations is no longer a complex maze. AWS provides thorough documentation to guide users in setting up recurring deliveries of emissions data to S3 buckets. Once data is in S3, you can seamlessly visualize and analyze it using the sustainability-proxy-metrics dashboard of the Cloud Intelligence Dashboards (CID). This arrangement not only provides visibility but also enables custom visualizations and deeper dives into account-level data across multiple AWS organizations.
Setting Up AWS Data Exports
For those eager to get started, AWS offers two distinct methods to configure your data exports:
Option 1: Create resources manually through the AWS Management Console for a hands-on learning experience. Option 2: Utilize Infrastructure as Code (IaC) involving AWS CloudFormation, ideal for automated and scalable configurations across several AWS Organizations.
Regardless of the option chosen, you will need an Amazon S3 bucket to store your exports and ensure your AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) users have appropriate permissions set up.
From Configuration to Insight
Once set, the data empowers you to run and analyze queries using Amazon Athena. The creation of tables and querying for insights become streamlined processes, with this data readily available for analysis in formats that suit your business needs.
Visualizing Data: The Sustainable Journey
AWS’s CID is instrumental in turning numbers into narratives. By leveraging QuickSight, AWS’s business intelligence tool, you’re able to build dynamic dashboards that contextualize your carbon emissions metrics. These dashboards provide comprehensive views - from monthly trends and account comparisons to regional comparisons and service-specific emissions reports.
Looking Ahead: Optimize Your Cloud Sustainability Workflows
The journey towards optimized cloud sustainability is a continuum. This new functionality from AWS is not just about tracking emissions—it is about equipping decision-makers with powerful data to drive action towards sustainable operations. By facilitating automatic exports and offering mechanisms to visualize this critical data, AWS positions itself as a leader in the responsible cloud ecosystem.
Conclusion: The Future of Responsible Cloud Management
Through the launch of carbon emissions data exports, AWS is not just enabling users to understand their emissions better; it provides a framework for accountability, transparency, and action in the cloud. By adopting these tools and techniques, organizations can embrace a future where sustainability and technological advancement walk hand in hand.
Let us be pioneers of this change, investing in technology that not only drives our objectives but also aligns with our ethical responsibility towards the planet. With AWS’s new feature, the power to manage and reduce your carbon footprint is in your hands, ripe for your organizational growth and our global ecosystem’s benefit.
Embrace the change. Lead the charge. Be the difference.