Environmental Impacts

Environmental impacts are reported for each request in the Impacts pydantic model and features multiple criteria such as the energy and global warming potential per phase (usage or embodied) as well as the total impacts.

To learn more on how we estimate the environmental impacts and what are our hypotheses go to the methodology section.

Structure of Impacts model

from ecologits.impacts.modeling import *

Impacts(
    energy=Energy(), # (1)!
    gwp=GWP(),
    adpe=ADPe(),
    pe=PE(),
    usage=Usage( # (2)!
        energy=Energy(),
        gwp=GWP(),
        adpe=ADPe(),
        pe=PE(),
    ),
    embodied=Embodied( # (3)!
        gwp=GWP(),
        adpe=ADPe(),
        pe=PE(),
    )
)

Total impacts for all phases.
Usage impacts for the electricity consumption impacts. Note that the energy is equal to the "total" energy impact.
Embodied impacts for resource extract, manufacturing and transportation of hardware components allocated to the request.

You can extract an impact with:

>>> response.impacts.usage.gwp.value  # (1)!
0.34    # Expressed in kgCO2eq.

Assuming you have made an inference and get the response in an response object.

Or you could get value range impact instead:

>>> response.impacts.usage.gwp.value
Range(min=0.16, max=0.48) # Expressed in kgCO2eq (1)

Range are used to define intervals.

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 (str) –

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 (str) –

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 (str) –

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 (str) –

PE value
unit (str) –

Megajoule (MJ)

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

Attributes:

type (str) –

usage
name (str) –

Usage
energy (Energy) –

Energy consumption
gwp (GWP) –

Global Warming Potential (GWP) usage impact
adpe (ADPe) –

Abiotic Depletion Potential for Elements (ADPe) usage impact
pe (PE) –

Primary Energy (PE) usage impact

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

Attributes:

type (str) –

embodied
name (str) –

Embodied
gwp (GWP) –

Global Warming Potential (GWP) embodied impact
adpe (ADPe) –

Abiotic Depletion Potential for Elements (ADPe) embodied impact
pe (PE) –

Primary Energy (PE) embodied impact

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

We currently assume by default a worldwide average impact factor for electricity consumption. We plan to allow users to change these impact factors dynamically based on a specific country/region or with custom values.

Default values (from ADEME Base Empreinte®):

Impact criteria	Value	Unit
GWP	\(5.904e-1\)	\(kgCO2eq / kWh\)
ADPe	\(7.378e-7\)	\(kgSbeq / kWh\)
PE	\(9.988\)	\(MJ / kWh\)