Naturecode/ 01
§ data · methodsthe commons

Every figure comes with how it was made.

Naturecode is a public record of the environmental impact of AI infrastructure. This is the contract behind it — the trust tiers, the methods, the open sources, and the plain endpoints anyone can pull without a key or an account.

§ trust tiers

Three ways we know a number.

The observatory never fabricates precision. Every figure carries one of three tiers, so you always know whether you are reading a model, a disclosure, or a live reading.
Estimated

Modelled from public inputs — the facility's capacity, cooling method, and local grid — using a documented method. The provenance record carries every input, so the number can be replayed and checked.

Reported

Disclosed by the operator, in a sustainability report or filing. We keep the source link. Reported figures are more specific than estimates but remain self-reported, not independently metered.

Instrumented

Read from a live meter or feed and carried with a signature, so the reading can be traced to its origin. The strongest tier — and the one most facilities do not yet reach.

§ the model

Estimates you can replay.

Most facilities do not publish machine-readable energy or water in real time. For those, we model it from three public inputs — installed capacity, cooling method, and the local grid — and we record every input so the number can be re-derived by hand.
The method is deliberately coarse and honest. It is a baseline that improves the moment an operator discloses real figures or a live meter comes online, not a claim to false precision.
How an estimate is built
  1. 01
    IT load
    Installed capacity × a 60% load factor × 8,760 hours a year.
  2. 02
    Total energy
    IT load × power usage effectiveness (baseline 1.2) for the full facility draw.
  3. 03
    On-site water
    IT load × water-per-kilowatt-hour for the cooling method (Green Grid WUE).
  4. 04
    Off-site water
    Total energy × the grid's water intensity (Ren et al. EWIF).
  5. 05
    Carbon
    Total energy × the country grid's carbon intensity (Ember).
  6. 06
    Embodied, land, e-waste, heat
    The fuller footprint, each from capacity and location on a documented per-megawatt basis.
§ sources

What every figure traces back to.

Nothing here is invented. Each dimension names its sources in the provenance record attached to every observation — the same names listed below.
Ren et al., "Making AI Less Thirsty" (arXiv:2304.03271)
The water-use framework behind on-site and off-site water estimates — WUE by cooling method, EWIF for the grid draw.
Academic, cited
The Green Grid — Water Usage Effectiveness (WP#35)
On-site water-per-kilowatt-hour figures by cooling type.
Industry standard
Ember — Global Electricity Review (2024/2025)
Country grid carbon intensity, in grams of CO2 per kilowatt-hour. The worker refreshes this live per region.
CC-BY
WRI Aqueduct 4.0 — Baseline Water Stress
Whether the basin around a facility is water-stressed, used to weight the water figures.
CC-BY
UN Global E-waste Monitor — method
The approach behind hardware-mass and e-waste estimates from capacity and refresh cadence.
Method, cited
OpenStreetMap · WDPA (protected areas)
Facility siting outlines and proximity to protected habitat for the land-use dimension.
ODbL · CC-BY
§ pull it yourself

Open endpoints, no key.

The whole catalog and every facility's history is reachable over plain HTTP — no login, no key, no rate wall for public reads. Point a notebook, a dashboard, or a paper at it. Responses are JSON.
GET/api/public/datacenters
The full catalog — every facility with its latest figure per dimension and trust tier. Filter by operator, region, country, or tier.
GET/api/public/datacenters/{slug}
One facility in full — every observation, every provenance record, every source link.
GET/api/public/datacenters/{slug}/timeseries?kind={kind}&field={field}
One dimension's history for a facility as packed [time, value] pairs, ready to chart.
GET/api/public/ecosystem/{slug}/timeseries
The nature side — forest, watershed, and habitat signals for a cross-linked ecosystem.

Public data is licensed for reuse with attribution. Cite the original sources named above.

Have a real figure?

If you operate a facility, or hold a metered reading, a disclosure moves a figure from estimated to reported — and a signed feed moves it to instrumented. The record gets more honest with every real number added.