Green Index: A Measure of Locally Available Green Energy for Sustainable, Grid–Aware Data Center Operations

In the context of the GLACIATION project, the Greek transmission system operator IPTO is using the project platform to orchestrate the distribution of computational loads among data centers located at a number of distinct sites, with the objective of minimizing the environmental cost. To facilitate this, we introduce the ‘Green Index’, a novel supply–side measure of locally available green energy. The index can be derived directly from a stream of telemetry data, is strongly correlated to <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$\text{CO}_{2}$</tex> emissions, and is comparable across different locations and times. Its introduction is an important stepping stone towards sustainable, grid-aware data center operations.