OICC Press International Journal of Energy and Environmental Engineering 2251-6832 14 4 (December 2023) 2022 10 10 Capping carbon emission from green data centers 10.1007/s40095-022-00539-9 EN Tathagata Bhattacharya Auburn University, Montgomery, US Mostafa Rahgouy Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering, Shelby Center for Engineering Technology, Samuel Ginn College of Engineering, Auburn University, Auburn, AL, 36849-5347, US Xiaopu Peng Lander University, Greenwood, US Taha Takreeti Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering, Shelby Center for Engineering Technology, Samuel Ginn College of Engineering, Auburn University, Auburn, AL, 36849-5347, US Ting Cao Truman State University, Kirksville, US Jianzhou Mao Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering, Shelby Center for Engineering Technology, Samuel Ginn College of Engineering, Auburn University, Auburn, AL, 36849-5347, US Amit Das Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering, Shelby Center for Engineering Technology, Samuel Ginn College of Engineering, Auburn University, Auburn, AL, 36849-5347, US Xiao Qin Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering, Shelby Center for Engineering Technology, Samuel Ginn College of Engineering, Auburn University, Auburn, AL, 36849-5347, US Apurba Sinha Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering, Guru Gobind Singh Educational Society Technical Campus, Bokaro, IN Journal Article 2022 10 10 Abstract The world has witnessed a global surge in energy consumption and carbon footprint since the industrial revolution. Data centers are claimed to be the second most significant contributor of the havoc greenhouse gasses. This paper deals with modeling carbon footprint of green data centers. Initially, we use a panel dataset of a green data center that mostly relies on green energy resources for power. Our study reveals that in spite of massive renewable energy usage, the carbon footprint trend of this data center is quite significant. Alongside, due to massive nuclear energy usage in this data center, a hefty amount of nuclear waste is generated causing a global threat to sustainability. This is a novel paper that pinpoints that though green data centers claim they are zero-carbon data centers but the reality is different. We prove that green data centers also emit significant amount of greenhouse gasses and cause danger to sustainability. Alongside, we provide a nuclear footprint estimator that effectively calculates the nuclear emission and carbon footprint from the data center each hour. We also provide a remedy to this entire situation and provide a carbon footprint model in this paper that optimizes the total carbon emission from this green data center.