Environmental Impacts
Environmental impacts are reported for each request in the ImpactsOutput that features multiple impact criteria such as energy consumption or the global warming potential per phase (usage or embodied) as well as the total impacts. It also contains potential warnings and errors that can occur during the calculation.
To learn more on how we estimate the environmental impacts and what are our hypotheses go to the methodology section.
Impacts Output
The ImpactsOutput is structured the following way:
from ecologits.tracers.utils import ImpactsOutput
from ecologits.impacts.modeling import ADPe, Embodied, Energy, GWP, PE, Usage
ImpactsOutput(
energy=Energy(), # Total energy consumed (electricity)
gwp=GWP(), # Total global warming potential (or GHG emissions)
adpe=ADPe(), # Total abiotic resource depletion
pe=PE(), # Total energy consumed from primary sources
usage=Usage(
energy=Energy(),
gwp=GWP(),
adpe=ADPe(),
pe=PE(),
),
embodied=Embodied(
gwp=GWP(),
adpe=ADPe(),
pe=PE(),
),
warnings=None,
errors=None
)
Example of an Impact Value
The impact objects named Energy, GWP, ADPe or PE all share the following structure:
from ecologits.impacts.modeling import BaseImpact
from ecologits.utils.range_value import RangeValue
class GWP(BaseImpact): # (1)!
type: str = "GWP"
name: str = "Global Warming Potential"
unit: str = "kgCO2eq"
value: float | RangeValue = 0.34
You can retrieve the GWP impact value from a request with the following:
>>> response.impacts.gwp.value
0.34 # Total GHG emissions in kgCO2eq.
>>> response.impacts.usage.gwp.value
0.23 # or for the usage phase only
Example with a RangeValue
Impact values can also be represented as intervals with the RangeValue object. They are used to give an estimate range of possible values between a min and a max.
About RangeValue intervals
This range of values corresponds a high-confidence approximation interval, within which we are confident enough that the true consumption lies. This interval is defined by several approximations, such as the model size (if unknown) and the statistical regressions that we perform for estimating quantities. For more information, see the methodology.
Example of an impact with a RangeValue:
Impact Criteria
To evaluate the impact of human activities on the planet or on the climate we use criteria that usually focus on a specific issue such as GHG emissions for global warming, water consumption and pollution or the depletion of natural resources. We currently support three environmental impact criteria in addition with the direct energy consumption.
Monitoring multiple criteria is useful to avoid pollution shifting, which is defined as the transfer of pollution from one medium to another. It is a common pitfall to optimize only one criterion like GHG emissions (e.g. buying new hardware that is more energy efficient), that can lead to higher impacts on minerals and metals depletion for example (see encyclopedia.com ).
Energy
The Energy criterion refers to the direct electricity consumption of GPUs, server and other equipments from the data center. As defined the energy criteria is not an environmental impact, but it is used to estimate other impacts in the usage phase. This criterion is expressed in kilowatt-hour (kWh).
Energy model attributes
Attributes:
-
type(str) –energy
-
name(str) –Energy
-
value(ValueOrRange) –Energy value
-
unit(str) –Kilowatt-hour (kWh)
Global Warming Potential (GWP)
The Global Warming Potential (GWP) criterion is an index measuring how much heat is absorbed by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere compared to carbon dioxide. This criterion is expressed in kilogram of carbon dioxide equivalent (kgCO2eq).
Learn more: wikipedia.org
GWP model attributes
Attributes:
-
type(str) –GWP
-
name(str) –Global Warming Potential
-
value(ValueOrRange) –GWP value
-
unit(str) –Kilogram Carbon Dioxide Equivalent (kgCO2eq)
Abiotic Depletion Potential for Elements (ADPe)
The Abiotic Depletion Potential – elements (ADPe) criterion represents the reduction of non-renewable and non-living (abiotic) resources such as metals and minerals. This criterion is expressed in kilogram of antimony equivalent (kgSbeq).
Learn more: sciencedirect.com
ADPe model attributes
Attributes:
-
type(str) –ADPe
-
name(str) –Abiotic Depletion Potential (elements)
-
value(ValueOrRange) –ADPe value
-
unit(str) –Kilogram Antimony Equivalent (kgSbeq)
Primary Energy (PE)
The Primary Energy (PE) criterion represents the amount of energy consumed from natural sources such as raw fuels and other forms of energy, including waste. This criterion is expressed in megajoule (MJ).
Learn more: wikipedia.org
PE model attributes
Attributes:
-
type(str) –PE
-
name(str) –Primary Energy
-
value(ValueOrRange) –PE value
-
unit(str) –Megajoule (MJ)
Impact Phases
Inspired from the Life Cycle Assessment methodology we classify impacts is two phases (usage and embodied). The usage phase is about the environmental impacts related to the energy consumption while using an AI model. The embodied phase encompasses upstream impacts such as resource extraction, manufacturing, and transportation. We currently do not support the third phase which is end-of-life due to a lack of open research and transparency on that matter.
Learn more: wikipedia.org
Another pitfall in environmental impact assessment is to only look at the usage phase and ignore upstream and downstream impacts. This can lead to higher overall impacts on the entire life cycle. If you replace old hardware by newer that is more energy efficient, you will get a reduction of impacts on the usage phase, but it will increase the upstream impacts as well.
Usage
The Usage phase accounts for the environmental impacts while using AI models. We report all criteria in addition to direct energy consumption for this phase.
Note that we use the worldwide average electricity mix impact factor by default.
Usage model attributes
Embodied
The Embodied phase accounts for the upstream environmental impacts such as resource extraction, manufacturing and transportation allocated to the request. We report all criteria (excluding energy consumption) for this phase.
Embodied model attributes
Impact Factors
We use impact factors to quantify environmental harm from human activities, measuring the ratio of greenhouse gases, resource consumption, and other criteria resulting from activities like energy consumption, industrial processes, transportation, waster management and more.
Electricity Mix
When initializing EcoLogits, you can choose a specific electricity mix zone from the ADEME Base Empreinte® database.
from ecologits import EcoLogits
# Select the electricity mix of France
EcoLogits.init(electricity_mix_zone="FRA")
By default, the WOR World electricity mix is used, whose values are:
| Impact criteria | Value | Unit |
|---|---|---|
| GWP | kgCO2eq / kWh | |
| ADPe | kgSbeq / kWh | |
| PE | MJ / kWh |