Question 0 / 5
~3 min

Why not the cleanest region by default?

A short survey on how cloud workloads are placed at the moment of first deployment, and what would have to change for low-carbon regions to become the default.

Time: 3 min
Questions: 5
Contact: paper@ribalba.de

We are studying a simple question: across global electricity grids, a small set of regions remains persistently low-carbon year-round — yet most cloud workloads continue to run in regions with substantially dirtier grids. This survey asks why.

The focus is the first placement decision — the choice of region or zone when a workload is initially deployed — not runtime relocation, time-shifting, or workload portability. Five short questions, around three minutes.

Anonymity and data use. Responses are stored pseudonymously (no name, email, or IP address is collected). Data are used exclusively for the academic publication described above and for any directly derived follow-up work. You may close this tab at any time without consequence; partial responses are discarded.

§ Eligibility Screening

Are you the right respondent?

Do you currently make, recommend, approve, or substantially influence decisions about the cloud region or zone in which workloads are deployed?required

Thank you

This survey is targeted at practitioners who directly influence cloud workload placement decisions. We will not collect your responses, but we very much appreciate your time.

§

Please answer the remaining questions with respect to the full set of workloads you influence — production services, internal tooling, CI/CD, data pipelines, batch jobs — not only the workload that first comes to mind. Throughout, region/zone refers to the cloud deployment location selected at the time a workload is first deployed.

Question 1 / 5 Awareness

Before this survey…

were you aware that the carbon intensity of the electricity supplied to a cloud region/zone can differ substantially, and persist over time, relative to other regions/zones offered by the same provider?required

Question 2 / 5 Current practice

How often is carbon intensity considered at deployment time?

When a new workload is deployed, how often is the carbon intensity of the candidate region/zone explicitly considered as a selection criterion in your organization?required

Question 3 / 5 Realized practice

How much of your portfolio is already in lower-carbon regions?

Approximately what proportion of the workloads you influence are currently deployed in a region/zone that was chosen, at least in part, because of its lower carbon intensity?required

Question 4 / 5 Reasons

Why not a lower-carbon region by default?

For workloads under your influence that are not currently deployed in a lower-carbon region/zone, which of the following reasons apply?

Select all that apply.at least one

Informational and cognitive
Technical and operational
Economic and contractual
Organizational and decisional
Other

And of those you just selected, which is the single most decisive one?

From the items you selected above, which one carries the most weight in your organization's decisions?

Question 5 / 5 Enabling conditions

What would have to change?

Which of the following changes would most increase the likelihood that new workloads in your organization would be deployed in a lower-carbon region/zone by default?

Select up to three.at least one

0 of 3 selected
§ Context Optional but encouraged

About you and your workloads

This information is used only for subgroup analysis (e.g., "do small-organization respondents differ from large-organization respondents?"). It is not linkable to your identity.

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Submission received

Thank you.

Your response has been recorded. The full results, including the underlying carbon-intensity analysis, will be made available alongside the paper in mid-2027.

If you have colleagues who also influence region-selection decisions, please consider forwarding this survey to them — the value of the study scales with respondent diversity.

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