Every data centre operator can quote their PUE. Almost none can quote their market-based Scope 2 emissions per rack — and that's increasingly the number enterprise customers put in RFPs, because it's the number they need for their own Scope 3 reporting.
PUE measures efficiency, not carbon
A facility running PUE 1.4 on a coal-heavy grid emits far more per kWh of IT load than a PUE 1.6 facility on a renewables-heavy one. PUE tells you how little you waste; carbon depends on what you're wasting — and in India, that varies dramatically by state and by how your power is contracted.
The two Scope 2 numbers you need
The GHG Protocol requires dual reporting, and the difference matters commercially:
- Location-based: your consumption × the grid average emission factor where you sit. In India, CEA publishes the factors; a facility's location-based number is largely determined by geography.
- Market-based: reflects your actual contracts — open access renewable PPAs, captive solar, RECs. This is where your renewable procurement actually shows up as lower reported carbon.
Operators who've invested in renewable PPAs and only report location-based numbers are leaving that investment invisible. Operators who claim "100% renewable" without the contractual instruments to back the market-based calculation are one customer audit away from a problem.
What customers actually ask for
The questionnaires we see from enterprise customers converge on: total Scope 1 + 2 (both methods), emissions per kWh of IT load or per rack-equivalent, the renewable share with instrument types named, and the trajectory — what the numbers were the last two years.
Answering from measured data takes a data pipeline: monthly utility and DG data per facility, PPA settlement statements, and factors kept current. Answering from estimates works until one customer's auditor asks the follow-up question.
The 90-day version
For most operators, getting from "we quote PUE" to "we quote dual-method Scope 2 per facility, with evidence" is a 90-day project: one quarter of bills and settlement data, extraction and calculation automated, and a reporting format the sales team can drop into any RFP. The second quarter is an update, not a project.