carbon-cost-pair

Carbon Cost Pair

Purpose

For every cloud spend line item, produce a paired kgCO2e estimate suitable for CSRD and SEC climate disclosure. The skill pairs a dollar value (or resource quantity) with the best available carbon emissions factor for the given cloud region and service category, and returns the estimate with a mandatory confidence label and source citation.

No cloud credentials accepted. Carbon factors are fetched from provider sustainability pages or third-party sources.

When to use

Use this skill when:

• The user needs to pair a cloud spend or usage figure with a carbon estimate for sustainability reporting (CSRD Article 29a, SEC climate rule, GHG Protocol Scope 2)
• The user wants to compare the carbon intensity of the same workload across cloud regions or providers
• The user wants to understand the confidence level of a carbon estimate before including it in a regulatory disclosure

Operating rules

• Default to electricity-only Scope 2, market-based. Unless the caller specifies otherwise, compute Scope 2 emissions using market-based electricity factors (renewable energy certificate or PPA-adjusted). Location-based factors are available on request.
• Fetch live data first. Use WebFetch to retrieve the latest carbon factor data from the provider's sustainability API or dashboard before falling back to documentation-based estimates.
• Confidence labels mandatory. Every kgCO2e output must carry exactly one label:
• vendor-published — factor sourced from the provider's own sustainability API, dashboard, or data export within this session (include source URL and ISO 8601 timestamp)
• third-party — factor sourced from Electricity Maps, Cloud Carbon Footprint project, or equivalent third-party source (include source URL and timestamp)
• estimated — factor derived from regional grid average or published industry emission factors where no provider or third-party data is available (state the factor, source, and assumptions)
• No credentials accepted. No cloud credentials, billing account IDs, tenant data, or sustainability API tokens are accepted or required.
• Acknowledge data lag. Provider carbon data typically lags 60-90 days or more. State the data period whenever citing vendor-published factors.
• FOCUS column mapping. There are no native FOCUS v1.2 carbon columns. Represent carbon estimates as FOCUS tags: Tags/kgco2e, Tags/carbon_confidence, Tags/carbon_source.
• Load references only when needed.

Input

| Field | Required | Description | |---|---|---| | Cloud provider | Yes | AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, OCI, or multi-cloud | | Region | Yes | Provider region name (e.g., us-east-1, eastus, us-central1, ap-sydney-1) | | Service category | Yes | Compute, Storage, Networking, AI and Machine Learning, Databases, or Other | | Dollar value ($) | Yes | The spend amount to pair with a carbon estimate | | Resource quantity | Optional | If available, the underlying resource quantity (e.g., vCPU-hours, GiB-hours, GB transferred) for a more precise estimate | | Scope preference | Optional | Default: Scope 2 market-based. Options: scope2-market, scope2-location, scope1+2 |

Output shape

Return, per line item:

Region:           <provider region>
Service category: <category>
Dollar value:     $<amount>
kgCO2e estimate:  <value> kgCO2e  [<confidence label>]
Scope:            Scope 2 (market-based)  |  Scope 2 (location-based)
Data period:      <e.g., Q3 2025 or "Current as of 2026-05-13">
Source:           <URL>  (fetched: <ISO 8601 timestamp>  |  documentation date: <date>)
Methodology note: <one sentence describing the emission factor used>

FOCUS tags:
  Tags/kgco2e:           <value>
  Tags/carbon_confidence: <vendor-published | third-party | estimated>
  Tags/carbon_source:     <URL>

If multiple regions or service categories are provided, return one block per line item followed by a summary table.

Confidence label decision tree

1. Does the cloud provider publish a region-level carbon factor or API for this region and service?
2. Yes, and it was fetched this session → vendor-published
3. Yes, but the fetch failed or data is not current → proceed to step 2
4. Is Electricity Maps data available for the grid region, or is Cloud Carbon Footprint data available for this provider/region?
5. Yes → third-party
6. Fall back to IEA regional grid average emission factor or the provider's country-level average.
7. → estimated; state the factor used (e.g., 0.386 kgCO2e/kWh — IEA 2023 US average)

Regulatory context

• CSRD (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive): requires disclosure of Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions under ESRS E1. Cloud compute is typically Scope 2 (purchased electricity) and may contribute to Scope 3 Category 1 (purchased goods/services) for customers.
• SEC Climate Rule: requires material climate-related disclosures including Scope 1 and 2 emissions for large accelerated filers.
• GHG Protocol: defines market-based and location-based approaches for Scope 2. Both may be required; market-based is the default here.

References

Load these only when needed:

• [Carbon data sources](references/sources.md) — provider sustainability API URLs, third-party data sources, and fallback options.
• [Methodology](references/methodology.md) — market-based vs location-based Scope 2, data lag, and uncertainty labeling.