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The IDB’s Infrastructure and Energy Sector uses a Tool to Monitor Carbon Footprint and Calculate Emissions

April 3, 2023 by T. Luke Young - Maria Pfeifer - Jose Antonio Medica - William Perez Leave a Comment


The countries in Latin America and the Caribbean annually invest close to 1.8% of their regional GDP in infrastructure, a substantially lower number than that registered by other emerging economies. Therefore, increasing the infrastructure investment rate is one of the region’s most critical challenges. However, it is also necessary for the infrastructure sector in the region to increase its productivity and competitiveness with a renewed focus on social and environmental sustainability.

Technological disruptions are changing how infrastructure is operated at a speed and scale that is hard to fathom. Digitization, artificial intelligence, the collaborative economy, and the speed of adoption of new technologies have direct consequences on the production and consumption of services. As the adoption of cloud technologies by public and private organizations increase, the sustainability impact of their digital transformation journey comes more clearly into focus. The change from traditional IT models, where on-premises resources require significant upfront investments, to a model where the resources are utilized on a pay-as-you-go model changes the focus on how to measure the environmental impact of this transition and how to report the carbon footprint from cloud providers. As the IDB pursues its work priorities on social inequality, diversity, climate change, and strengthening physical and digital infrastructure, it behooves it to understand how leveraging cloud technologies can impact and support this transition.

Sustainability Benefits of Using the Cloud

Organizations can reap significant sustainability co-benefits in three stages of the cloud journey: migration, optimization, and transformation. All cloud service providers that run their operations with high percentages of renewable energy offer an instant opportunity to reduce their carbon footprint. For example, studies conducted by international analyst firm 451 Research found that moving on-premises workloads to the AWS Cloud can lower the workload carbon footprint by at least 80% and up to 96% once AWS is powered with 100% renewable energy, a target Amazon is on the path to meet by 2025. Additionally, the study highlights that in the AWS Cloud 61% of carbon reduction is attributable to more efficient servers and higher server utilization, 11% to more efficient data center facilities, and 17% to reduced electricity consumption and renewable energy usage.

The corresponding reduction of carbon footprints achieved just by migrating to the cloud can be quickly visualized through cloud console-accessed tools that allow organizations to analyze historical trends, understand the current status, and project future reductions of their footprint. In addition, once organizations have migrated to the cloud, they can further reduce their carbon emissions by optimizing their workloads through cloud service provider optimization tools. For example, AWS offers the Well-Architected Sustainability Pillar, which provides a way for organizations to consistently measure architectures against sustainability best practices and identify areas for improvement, focusing on reducing energy consumption and carbon footprint in the cloud. 

Once workloads are optimized, organizations can transform through the cloud. They can develop tools that display real-time dashboards to measure, track, and manage carbon footprints at the product, process, and entity levels. In the transformation phase, innovative solutions in sustainable transport, agriculture, water, and climate-smart cities can be achieved through the cloud.

The Inter-American Development Bank Experience

The IDB completed a 3-year project to migrate to the Cloud in 2020. The carbon footprint of the cloud that year registered 34.8 MTCO2e in estimates of AWS emissions. For the year 2021 it was 27.4 MTCO2e and for the year 2022, estimated up to October, it was 0.2 MTCO2e.

The AWS Customer Carbon Footprint Tool allows the IDB to track the impact of emissions reductions over time, quantify the carbon offsets to be purchased to offset any emissions generated from its use of AWS Cloud services, and facilitate the preparation of carbon footprint reports.

Cloud service providers offer design principles, operational guidance, best practices, potential tradeoffs, and improvement plans to meet sustainability targets. For example, organizations should focus on optimizing workload placement, solution architecture, software, data, hardware, and development and deployment patterns to increase energy efficiency correspondingly reducing their carbon footprint.

Organizations must be able to track, measure, review, and forecast the carbon emissions generated by cloud use. Check with your cloud provider and ask how to use these tools to monitor your usage. If you are currently exploring a cloud migration or implementing projects in the cloud, consider how you can design your solutions with a focus on sustainability.

Methodology Tool


Reforms to Foster Sustainable and Inclusive Infrastructure in Latin America and the Caribbean


Filed Under: Innovación y sistemas inteligentes de transporte, Transporte Sostenible, Transporte Urbano

T. Luke Young

T. Luke es líder en resiliencia climática gestionando equipos en toda América Latina y el Caribe brindando asistencia técnica, identificando mejores prácticas e involucrando a actores estratégicos para desarrollar capacidades locales en la planificación de la acción climática, evaluación de la vulnerabilidad y estrategias de resiliencia. Codirigió un esfuerzo ambicioso para desarrollar un plan de recuperación resiliente multisectorial para la iniciativa nacional ReImagina en Puerto Rico después de la devastación causada por los huracanes Irene y María. También fue director del proyecto que brindo asistencia técnica para 100 Ciudades Resilientes en el desarrollo de estrategias para las ciudades de: San Juan, Santiago de los Caballeros, Juárez, Ciudad de México, Colima, Medellín, Cali y Quito. Con el BID y Metro Quito, desarrolló una herramienta de toma de decisiones para ayudar a elegir políticas, estrategias de planificación y gestión con principios de sostenibilidad, cualidades de resiliencia, gestión de riesgos y adaptación climática para mejorar la planificación y el funcionamiento del sistema a largo plazo. Recientemente dirigió un equipo en colaboración con el BID y el MTOP en el diseño de una red vial nacional resiliente en Ecuador. Actualmente lidera equipos que apoyan la iniciativa C40 CAPTAP en Colombia y Ecuador para desarrollar planes de acción climática y recomendar acciones de mitigación y adaptación inclusivas. T. Luke tiene más de 20 años de experiencia profesional global y posee una maestría en Planificación Urbana y Estudios de Arquitectura de MIT.

Maria Pfeifer

María Angélica Pfeifer es Consultora de Transformación Digital en el Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo (BID), donde gestiona programas de innovación tecnológica para los países de América Latina y el Caribe en las áreas de Transporte, Energía, y Agua y Sanidad. Antes de unirse al BID, María Angélica trabajó como consultora de gestión de la transformación y tecnologías de información por 18 años. Fue socia en Azurian Consulting. Recibió su grado como Ingeniera Industrial de la Universidad de Los Andes y tiene un título de Alta Gerencia de la Universidad de Los Andes.

Jose Antonio Medica

Jose Antonio Medina is an IT Lead specialist at the Inter-American Development Bank, managing the Information technology infrastructure area, which includes Cloud Platforms, Network and Telecommunications infrastructure, and Security operations. Systems Engineer and Master of computer science from the Universidad de los Andres, Venezuela, and Arizona State University, USA, respectively.

William Perez

William Perez graduated from International Business and a Specialization in Political Studies from Universidad EAFIT in Medellin, Colombia. After working for the Colombian government in China, he moved to Washington D.C to study a Master of Science in Foreign Service at Georgetown University. William was a consultant at the Inter-American Development Bank’s Grants and Co-Financing Management Unit. In the last 10 years, he worked in technology sales and business development for projects supported by the Inter-American Development Bank, World Bank, United Nations Agencies, and International Monetary Fund. William is currently the Account Manager for Amazon Web Services for the Inter-American Development Bank.

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Desde BID Transporte mejoramos vidas en América Latina y el Caribe promoviendo una movilidad más eficiente, accesible y segura.

Descubre nuestro espacio de intercambio de ideas y conocimiento y forma parte de él. Desde Moviliblog, queremos compartir lo último en movilidad y transporte en América Latina y el Caribe e invitarlos a conocer nuestras áreas temáticas: ITS, seguridad vial, grandes proyectos, logística y transporte urbano, así como nuestras temáticas transversales de evaluación de impacto, género y transporte sostenible.

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