Member Story
How Adrian Cockcroft, Pindy Bhullar of UBS, and a working group including Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and AWS built the Real Time Cloud standard — the first specification requiring cloud providers to share real-time energy and carbon data in a common format, ratified April 2025 after 21 months of biweekly collaboration.
Organisations involved
April 2025
RTC ratified — 21 months from launch to standard
3
Major cloud providers aligned — Azure and GCP co-authored the standard; AWS responded to disclosure requests
Minute-by-minute
The shift from monthly reporting with months of delay to real-time metrics for all cloud providers
The Problem
Every organisation trying to measure the carbon footprint of its software faced the same foundational problem: the data from cloud providers was bad. Not bad in the sense of being fabricated — bad in the sense of being late, incomplete, and incomparable. Cloud providers released carbon data to their customers on a monthly basis, with delays of several months. If you ran workloads across AWS, Azure, and GCP, you received three different reports using three different methodologies on three different timescales. There was no common format, no common definitions, no way to compare.
The consequences rippled through the entire green software ecosystem. Customers reporting Scope 3 emissions were forced to produce estimates using incomplete public information that excluded the cloud providers’ own renewable energy purchases — systematically inflating emissions estimates. Organisations that had invested heavily in clean cloud infrastructure were being penalised by the data gap.
This was not an academic concern. The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive in Europe and California’s emerging requirements now mandate supply-chain-level carbon disclosure. The GSF’s own SCI specification needed accurate grid carbon intensity as an input. Every measurement tool in the ecosystem was only as good as the data the cloud providers chose to share.
The Journey
March 2023
Having spent years as AWS's VP of Cloud Architecture Strategy, Adrian Cockcroft understood both sides of the problem. Cloud providers had the data but lacked a standard format for sharing it. Customers needed that data to comply with emerging regulations and make informed decisions about where to run workloads. His framing: the goal was not perfect data but standardised, comparable data that would make the carbon emissions model for cloud workloads "less wrong and more useful."
Read Adrian's original proposal on Medium →July 2023
The project was officially launched with a GitHub repository. What made it remarkable was who sat at the table: Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform — fierce competitors — agreed to participate directly in the biweekly working group alongside enterprise consumers like UBS. This created a space where providers could hear directly from enterprises, and enterprises could understand the constraints providers faced. The group maintained this biweekly cadence for over two years.
About the Real Time Cloud project →November 2023
RTC was highlighted in the GSF's Book of News as having "a clear mission: establishing a benchmark for measuring carbon emissions. This initiative marks a significant shift from the traditional practice of monthly reporting to the adoption of minute-by-minute metrics for all cloud providers."
Read about Decarbonize Software 2023 →2023–2024
The working group compiled regional metadata covering 2022 datasets from all three major cloud providers into a single comparable table — the first time this data had been assembled in a common format. In August 2024, the dataset was officially released as open data. In December 2024, AWS provided PUE data for 2022 and 2023 for the first time, responding to the working group's disclosure request and validating the standard's role as the industry mechanism for cloud carbon transparency.
Real Time Cloud v1.0 release →April 2025
RTC was ratified — 21 months from launch. The standard defines a Cloud Region Metadata Table covering PUE, WUE, carbon-free energy percentages, renewable energy breakdown, carbon intensity (location-based, market-based, marginal, average), grid zone IDs, geolocation, and total ICT energy consumption. The standard feeds directly into the GSF ecosystem: Impact Framework, SCI-o, and the CNCF Kepler project for Kubernetes pod and container energy allocation.
Read about the Real Time Cloud standard ratification →January–February 2026
The specification was reformatted to ISO formatting requirements in January 2026, signalling its trajectory towards formal international recognition. V1.1 was approved by the working group in February 2026, incorporating feedback from the FinOps Foundation — expanding the standard's reach beyond sustainability teams into financial operations. Adrian published the first-ever cross-provider PUE comparison in The New Stack using RTC's standardised dataset.
Real Time Cloud on GitHub →This would open up opportunities to leverage existing performance monitoring tools and dashboards, extend optimization tools like autoscalers and schedulers, and to build new kinds of carbon analysis and optimization tools and services.
Adrian Cockcroft, co-chair, Real Time Cloud
Who came together
Adrian Cockcroft
Independent (formerly VP Cloud Architecture Strategy, AWS)
Independent
Original proposer, co-chair, and primary technical driver who conceived the standard at QCon London and led biweekly working group meetings for 21 months. Published the first cross-provider PUE comparison using RTC data.
Pindy Bhullar
Technology Sustainability Consultant
UBS
Co-chair who brought the enterprise consumer perspective, connecting RTC to the broader organisational sustainability transformation. Also co-leads the SOFT framework.
In their words
"This proposal seeks to define a standard for real-time carbon and energy data as time-series data that would be accessed alongside and synchronized with the existing throughput, utilization and latency metrics that are provided for the components and applications in computing environments. "
Adrian Cockcroft
Proposal for a Realtime Carbon Footprint Standard
"Collaboration is essential at every level: within teams, across organisations, and even between institutions. Time is of the essence; we can't afford to wait for years to change the tech culture. The change needs to begin now. "
Pindy Bhullar
GSF Advocate Series
Addressing critical gaps in cloud sustainability reporting.
Explore the exciting progress in the mission to reduce software's carbon footprint as we highlight key milestones achieved in green software during the Summer of 2023.
Pindy Bhullar is responsible for ESG architecture at UBS and a Ph.D. Researcher. Her reputation as a values-driven leader with an ethical compass is widely recognized, earning her the respect of peers, team members, and top management.
On the foothills of COP28, we hosted Decarbonize Software on November 16, a global virtual event that united software sustainability leaders and advocates across the technology, ICT, and energy sectors.
Our Book of News 2023 aims to ensure every individual within our ecosystem feels supported in their green software journey and has reasons to confidently advocate for using green software principles and patterns.
All RTC data is openly available on the project's GitHub repository. If your organisation runs workloads across multiple cloud providers and struggles with inconsistent carbon reporting, the Cloud Region Metadata Table gives you comparable, standardised data now.
The working group is actively seeking contributions to produce best-estimate region metadata for the current year
