Happy Earth Day: Announcing Green Compute open beta

At Cloudflare, we are on a mission to help build a better Internet. We continue to grow our network, and it is important for us to do so responsibly.

Since Earth Day 2021, some pieces of this effort have included:

• Making a commitment to powering our network with 100% renewable energy

• Hosting our first Impact Week

• Releasing our first Impact Report and emissions inventory report

• Reducing the environmental impact of web searches via Crawler Hints

• Providing customers with visibility about their Scope 3 emissions with Carbon Impact Reports

And we are just getting started. We are working to make the Cloudflare network — and our customers’ websites, applications, and networks — as efficient as possible in terms of design, hardware, systems, and protocols. After all, we do not want to lose sight of our responsibilities to our home: our planet Earth.

During Impact Week last year, we began testing Green Compute in a closed beta. Green Compute makes Workers Cron Triggers run only in facilities that are powered by renewable energy. We are hoping to incentivize more facilities to implement responsible climate and energy policies.

With Green Compute enabled, Workers Cron Triggers will run only on Cloudflare points of presence that are located in data centers that are powered by 100% renewable energy.

Based on carbon accounting and renewable energy standards like RE100, all Cloudflare operations are considered 100% powered by renewable energy because we purchase the same amount of renewable energy as the total energy we use globally.

However, the data centers we operate in are co-located with facilities owned by other companies. Although our renewable energy purchases cover the energy used by our equipment, all other energy consumed at that facility may or may not be renewable.

Renewable energy can be purchased in a number of ways, including:

• Through on-site generation (wind turbines, solar panels)

• Directly from renewable energy producers through contractual agreements called Power Purchase Agreements (PPA)

• In the form of Renewable Energy Credits (RECs, IRECs, GoOs) from an energy credit market that helps offset energy use on-site

Today, we are happy to announce that we are bringing this function to all our developers — Green Compute is now in open beta. To get started, head to your Workers App, click Change Setting under Compute Setting, and select Green Compute.

Now, any time you create a scheduled workload, you will see a leaf icon indicating that your schedules will be run in data centers powered by renewable energy sources. With just one click, you can help build a better Internet.

• Want to get more involved with the Cloudflare Developer community, help shape what we build next, or give feedback on Green Compute? Enter our Discord and join the conversation.

• Learn more about how Cloudflare is helping build a better Internet via Cloudflare Impact.