Real Time Cloud (RTC)

Overview

The Real Time Cloud (RTC) standard from the Green Software Foundation's Software Standards Working Group is described as the first standard requiring cloud providers to share real-time energy and carbon data in a common format. It normalizes energy and carbon metadata from AWS, Azure and GCP into a single comparable dataset, with the stated aims of enabling accurate emissions reporting, carbon-aware workload scheduling and regulatory compliance. The standard page notes that cloud providers currently release carbon data to customers monthly with delays of several months. The dataset is published in the Green-Software-Foundation/real-time-cloud GitHub repository.

Use cases

• Get real-time energy and carbon data for cloud workloads
• Normalise provider metadata across AWS, Azure and GCP
• Schedule workloads against real-time carbon intensity
• Support emissions reporting with provider data

Sources

• GSF Real Time Cloud standard
• Real Time Cloud standard repository