Climate Cost Explorer A User Guide Contents 1 Overview 3 1.1 Purpose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 1.2 Summary of Application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 1.2.1 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 1.2.2 Purpose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 2 User Guide 4 2.1 Creating Access Keys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 2.2 Start Pages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 2.2.1 About . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 2.2.2 Sign in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 2.2.3 Sign up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 2.2.4 Navigation Bar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 2.3 Dashboard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 2.3.1 Overall Monthly Graph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 2.3.2 Monthly Graphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 2.3.3 Comparator Weight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 2.4 Individual Services Pages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 2.4.1 Graphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 2.4.2 Target Value . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 2.4.3 Date Picker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 2.4.4 Monthly Averages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 2.5 Comparator Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 2.6 Global Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 2.7 Forecast Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 1 List of Figures 1 About Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 2 Sign in - Dashboard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 3 Sign Up Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 4 Navigation Bar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 5 Monthly Emissions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 6 Monthly Carbon Emissions Overall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 7 Individual Monthly Carbon Emissions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 8 Comparison Feature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 9 Individual Services Graphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 10 Target Value . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 11 Picking a date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 12 Monthly Averages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 13 Weight equivalents of carbon emissions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 14 Regional Usage of AWS Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 15 Forecasting Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 2 1 Overview 1.1 Purpose The purpose of this document is to provide users with a guide on how to use the Climate Cost Explorer application. Firstly, this document provides a summary of the application, explaining its purpose. Following this is a detailed guide on how to navigate through the application. 1.2 Summary of Application This section provides a brief overview of the Climate Cost Explorer. 1.2.1 Overview Climate Cost Explorer is a tool that can be used to track the emissions created by a company’s AWS infrastructure usage. The emissions are calculated from the usage data collected by the AWS Cost Explorer API. AWS Cost Explorer gives you access to information about currently running services such as compute, storage, and others. Each one of the AWS services produce a certain amount of carbon dioxide due to the electricity used to run the server it is on. Every service on AWS has an underlying server that it is running on, and so all services contribute to the emissions generated; however, some services contribute more than others. Currently, the Climate Cost Explorer shows the metrics for the following services: • EC2 • DynamoDB • RDS • Kinesis • Lambda • S3 1.2.2 Purpose One of the main purposes of the Climate Cost Explorer application is to give users the opportunity to discover which services may be the most harmful and as a result, optimise them. Another purpose of the application is to provide users with clear and comprehensive graphs and metrics. The application provides users with graphs display- ing the monthly emissions of each service, along with single pages with detailed graphs of each service. The individual service pages allow users to choose which dates they would like to see the usage for, along with setting a target line and comparing their target to their current usage. This can be easily altered to get specific metrics for a specified period. 3 2 User Guide This section will detail the pages in the application and describe how to navigate through them. 2.1 Creating Access Keys The following section will explain how to make AWS access keys from your AWS ac- count. These access keys will be required when registering to the application. Your access keys will allow for the API to gather information on your account’s usage and emissions. 2.2 Start Pages This section will describe the first page users are greeted by and how to register and log in to view the other pages of the application. 2.2.1 About Figure 1: About Page When you follow the link to the application, you will be directed to the about page, which describes the purpose of the application and has screenshots of what the appli- cation looks like. The navigation bar on this page only gives you the option to sign up or sign in. 4 2.2.2 Sign in To access the application, users must sign in. To sign in, you need to use the email you entered when registering and the password you created using the form shown below. Once you are signed in, you can access the application. Once signed in, you will be directed to the dashboard page, which is detailed in section2.3. Figure 2: Sign in - Dashboard 2.2.3 Sign up To sign in, users must register by filling out the form show in the screenshot above. To register, you are required to enter the following details: • Email • Access Keys • Password Once you have signed up, you will need to verify your account. Once verified, you will be required to sign in using the credentials you used to sign up. Once signed in, you will be directed to the dashboard page, which is detailed in section 2.3. 5 Figure 3: Sign Up Page 2.2.4 Navigation Bar After signing in, all pages on the application have a navigation bar. You can use the links on the navigation bar to access the about page, dashboard, global and individual services pages. The navigation bar is consistent throughout these pages. Figure 4: Navigation Bar 6 2.3 Dashboard After signing in, this is the first page you will see. This is the main page of the application. This page features several graphs. Figure 5: Monthly Emissions 2.3.1 Overall Monthly Graph The first line graph you will see is this month’s daily carbon emissions. The month’s daily carbon emissions for all services will be shown. This is accompanied by a textual breakdown of each service. You can enter a target value which will show as a red line on the graph and will allow you to compare your monthly emissions to your target. You can also select the data display below where you enter your target emissions, you can choose between seeing the overall emissions, or each service on the same graph. You can also click on the scale button, which will show each services’ monthly emissions in grams. 7 Figure 6: Monthly Carbon Emissions Overall 2.3.2 Monthly Graphs Below the overall monthly graph, you will see six separate graphs that show the monthly emissions of each service in more detail. Clicking “View more” presents you with the following screen. Figure 7: Individual Monthly Carbon Emissions 8 2.3.3 Comparator Weight Beside the pie chart, you will see the Emission Comparator widget. This shows you a brief overview of how your emissions output compares to real-world examples. Clicking the “View More” button will take you to the comparator page. Figure 8: Comparison Feature 9 2.4 Individual Services Pages By clicking the services link on the navigation bar, you will see a dropdown menu of the six services we have the usage of. Each service page has the same layout. In this instance, clicking the DynamoDB option will take you to the overview page for DynamoDB, which will allow you to scrutinise emissions output in more detail. 2.4.1 Graphs Each Service page will have a graph on the respective page. In this instance, the graph for the DynamoDB service has been used. The graph shows detailed information and allows the user to alter inputs such as the target emissions figure and the start and end date for the data. Figure 9: Individual Services Graphs 2.4.2 Target Value Similarly, to the dashboard, there is a target setter feature on each of the service pages. You can enter a target value. This will then adjust the position of the red target line for the service that has had the information altered. The target value box can be seen below. 10 Figure 10: Target Value 2.4.3 Date Picker The Date Picker function allows you to input a start date and an end date in which to measure your emissions. You can measure a period of 1 year. You will have the option to see the data presented in Line Graph or Bar Chart form. Figure 11: Picking a date 11 2.4.4 Monthly Averages The monthly averages chart allows you to see in bar graph or line chart form the Emissions output in an accessible, simple and visual format. Figure 12: Monthly Averages 12 2.5 Comparator Page The comparator page shows you the total amount of emissions for your account over a yearly period. It then provides real-world equivalent examples of your emissions. For example, this account has emitted a total of 9448.93 tonnes of co2, and this is the equivalent weight of 900 baby elephants. Businesses can look at these figures and use the examples as a motivator to reduce their carbon output. Figure 13: Weight equivalents of carbon emissions 13 2.6 Global Page The Global Page shows you how much each region has contributed to the total carbon emission amount, as a percentage. In this instance, you can see that the eu-west-1 region, which is situated in Ireland, has contributed 3.17% of the total. The colours provide an indication as to how much the region has contributed, with green being a low amount, relatively, and red being a higher amount. Figure 14: Regional Usage of AWS Services 14 2.7 Forecast Page The Forecast page allows you to see the expected emissions for each service for the next month. This can help a business to plan and see what their impact on the environment will be if they continue using the resources they are using. Again, it can act as a motivator and encourage a business to be more environmentally aware. Figure 15: Forecasting Page 15