Environmental Impact
These are our environmental impact calculations for the different clusters we have access to.
Mila Cluster
CO2 emissions for power consumption
The hardware for the Mila cluster is hosted in the province of Quebec, where the electricity is produced by Hydro-Québec, almost exclusively from hydroelectricity. The CO2 emissions are therefore very low, and we can find the exact values in CO₂ Emissions and Hydro-Québec Electricity, 1990-2021.
We use the most recent value in the table for the year 2021, which is 0.6 kg/MWh. The Mila cluster consumes about 115 kW of power, and is running 24/7.
By multiplying power by time, we get that 150 kW * (24*365 hours) is equal to 1314000 kWh, or 1314 MWh if we convert kilo- to mega-.
We multiply that by the CO2 emissions per MWh, and 1314 times 0.6 is 788.4 kg, which is less a ton of CO2. Looking online, it is relatively easy to find Gold Standard carbon credits for $25 per ton of CO2, so we can offset the entire Mila cluster by spending approximately $20 per year.
Hardware
No estimate has been done about the environmental impact of manufacturing the hardware itself.
Digital Research Alliance of Canada Clusters
CO2 emissions for power consumption
Our current mega-allocation with DRAC is on the Narval, Beluga and Cedar clusters.
Narval and Beluga are hosted in the École de technologie supérieure in Montreal (QC) so the same kind of reasoning and calculations apply as with the Mila cluster.
The Cedar cluster is hosted at the Simon Fraser University in Vancouver (BC), in a province where 87% of the electricity is hydroelectricity.
However, we do not have access to the exact numbers for those clusters at the moment.
Hardware
No estimate has been done about the environmental impact of manufacturing the hardware itself.