OpenTelemetry initiative aims to standardize Software Carbon Intensity signals

At the Observability Summit Europe 2026, a proposal was presented to bring Software Carbon Intensity (SCI) metrics into the OpenTelemetry ecosystem. The initiative seeks to move beyond simple energy measurements by linking carbon emissions to specific functional units of software activity, such as requests or transactions. This would allow engineers to use OpenTelemetry semantic conventions to consistently report and attribute carbon impact across shared cloud-native infrastructures.

Standardizing carbon observability

• The proposal uses the Software Carbon Intensity (SCI) formula: (E * I + M) / R.
• E (Energy): Energy consumed by the software.
• I (Carbon intensity): Carbon emissions per unit of energy.
• M (Embodied emissions): Hardware-related emissions allocated to the activity.
• R (Functional unit): The unit of work, such as a transaction or request.
• The goal is to implement these via OpenTelemetry semantic conventions to ensure interoperability between different tools like Kepler and various cloud providers.

Why it matters

By providing a common language for carbon telemetry, the initiative helps developers optimize software for sustainability rather than just raw energy consumption.