Methodology

How the edition was made: methods, the model card, the evidence cut and its age, the acceptance record and the glossary.

15 min read0 figures13 tables22 notesNR-XTECH-CLOUD-GLOBAL-2026-BASELINE

Contents

A.1Methods

The global baseline uses published values and four simple derivations. Each is shown in full so that any reader can reproduce it.

Table A.1Methods
No.	Derivation	Calculation	Result
(1)	Growth of Microsoft electricity consumed within the organisation, FY2023 to FY2024	29,829,540 ÷ 23,567,502 − 1	26.6%
(2)	Share of the three largest providers, and the remainder, Q2 2026	28 + 20 + 15; 100 − 63	63%; 37%
(3)	Duration of the AWS event, 11:48 PM to 2:20 PM PDT	14 h 32 min = 14.53 h	≈ 14.5 hours
(4)	Microsoft electricity consumed, FY2024 against FY2020	29,829,540 ÷ 10,770,714	about 2.8 times

Table A.2Coupling strength scale (matrix and model card)
Strength	Definition
STRONG	a disruption in the source system has historically changed the target system’s service or output within one season, in more than one region
MODERATE	an effect is documented but buffered or slower
WEAK	an effect is plausible but not documented at global scale

Table A.3Status grammar
Label	Rule
Reported	value as issued by its source, with year
Inferred	reasoned from cited evidence; never a measurement
Estimated	Nexus analytical value with stated method
Scenario	conditional on stated assumptions
Expert input	structured editorial judgement awaiting evidence

A.2Model card, Cloud System Model v0

Model ID: MDL-XT08-CLOUD · v0.1
Purpose: represent cloud, edge and distributed computing as infrastructure coupled to electricity, cooling water, finance, workforce and cyber resilience
Family: graph-based system of systems
Inputs: the cited sources of this edition; no proprietary data
Method: expert-specified coupling strengths (STRONG · MODERATE · WEAK) from assessments and analogue events
Validation: none yet, first validation against federation evidence in 2027
Uncertainty: qualitative; strengths are hypotheses, not measurements
Domain of validity: global scale; not for asset-, site- or country-level use
Reproducibility: strength table and sources published in this edition

20couplings

typed in v0

0strong

documented within one season

2moderate

documented, buffered

18weak

plausible, undocumented

A.3The baseline evidence cut

Every Nexus edition is published from a frozen evidence cut. The global baseline cut is documentary: it pins the exact edition of every source cited. Federation cuts begin with the first national Foundry cuts in 2027.

Cut ID: DC-XTECH-CLOUD-GLOBAL-2026-B0
Type: baseline documentary cut
Resolution policy: pinned · as of 30 September 2026
Sources pinned: 43 cited sources, each at the edition and access date in the references
Model runs: none at baseline, analytical values are stated with their method
Digest: computed at freeze and recorded in the publication record
Supersedes: nothing, first cut of the series
Superseded by: the 2027 cloud annual cut

Lineage

01
source edition
02
pinned citation
03
finding
04
page
05
publication record

Table A.4From the baseline cut to the federation cut
Element	Baseline 2026	2027 global annual
Sources	cited global publications, pinned by edition	national, regional and sector cuts through one graph
Analysis	stated methods and editorial estimates	typed analysis specifications
Models	Cloud System Model v0 specification	model runs with receipts
Findings	twelve baseline findings	findings re-bound to federation evidence
Review	five passes scheduled	five passes on the exact digest

A.4Evidence age and coverage

A 2026 global edition rests on evidence observed in many different years. This page shows each time base, so that no single year label hides older evidence.

Table A.5Evidence age and coverage
Indicator	Observed	Released	Cadence	Next release
US data centre report	2023	Dec 2024	periodic	next national update
Global electricity report	2024	2025	periodic	next IEA update
Irish metered electricity	2024	June 2025	annual	next CSO release
Operator environmental reports	2024	2025	annual	next annual reports
Cloud market release	Q2 2026	July 2026	quarterly	next quarter
UK competition decision	2025	July 2025	one-off	strategic market status outcome
EU DMA investigations	2025	Nov 2025	per release	designation decision
AWS event report	2025	Oct 2025	per event	next post-event report

Table A.6Coverage by system at baseline
System	Coverage	Thinnest dimension
Electricity	PARTIAL	site-level load on a common basis
Water	THIN	comparable water metrics
Market and law	GOOD	outcomes of reviews and proposals
Resilience	PARTIAL	dependence of public services
Efficiency	PARTIAL	common PUE baseline
Edge	THIN	deployment and energy data
Skills	THIN	workforce numbers
Hardware and minerals	THIN	supply dependence

Table A.7Designed empty states: what is not bound, what would fill it and why
Field	Source that would fill it	Blocker
Site-level electricity, cooling and water use on a common basis	operators, regulators under EU reporting rules, national laboratories	operator reports use different boundaries and years; EU reported data not retrieved¹⁹³⁵
IEA Energy and AI figures from the report itself	IEA Energy and AI report¹	the report pages returned access errors; figures come from search summaries
Uptime Institute survey figures from the report itself	Uptime Institute Global Data Center Survey 2025⁹	the survey page returned an access error; PUE and outage shares come from search summaries and are not used in findings
Outcome of the UK strategic market status process for Microsoft and AWS	UK CMA and Digital Markets Unit publications¹¹³⁹	the case page read gives a Q1 2026 decision point; the outcome was not retrieved
Commission preliminary findings on AWS and Azure under the DMA	European Commission press release¹²¹⁴	reported in trade press summaries; the Commission text was not opened
Text of the proposed Cloud and AI Development Act	European Commission proposal¹⁸	proposal read through a press report; target years differ across secondary sources
Designation of critical ICT third-party providers under DORA	European Supervisory Authorities¹⁷³⁸	the page read lists no designations; not retrieved
Dependence of public services on a few providers	national audit bodies, regulators, operators	no consolidated series found
Customer impact of the 2025 events	operators, customers, regulators²⁰²¹²²	incident reports state causes and times, not customer counts
Edge computing sites, devices and energy use	telecom operators, industry bodies³⁰	specifications read; no deployment figures retrieved
Grid connection queues and load forecasts for new facilities	grid operators and regulators	not retrieved
Hardware, chip and mineral dependence of data centres	industry and trade statistics	not retrieved; see the semiconductors edition for the chip layer
Cloud and data centre workforce size and skills gaps	national statistics, industry surveys	not retrieved; capability rung stays LISTED
Share of data centre electricity due to AI workloads	IEA, operators, national laboratories¹²	not split in the sources read here

A.5Evidence cards, two anchor sources

Published by Amazon Web Services. One-off post-event summary. Role: binds INF-011 and the resilience tiles. Coverage: one region, services listed with start and end times.

EVD-XT08-001

AWS summary of the us-east-1 event of 19 and 20 October 2025²⁰

Published by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory on 19 December 2024 and summarised by the US Department of Energy. Periodic. Role: binds ENE-002. Coverage: United States, 2014 to 2023 with a scenario range to 2028.

EVD-XT08-002

2024 United States Data Center Energy Usage Report²³

Table A.8Quality dimensions at baseline
Dimension	EVD-XT08-001	EVD-XT08-002
Completeness	services and times listed for one region	national total with a scenario range
Timeliness	about one week after the event	about one year after the data year
Revision	later revisions not checked	single edition read
Method transparency	cause described in prose	method in the full report, not opened
External validation	operator-reported only	laboratory report; peer review not stated

Evidence cards to follow in 2027

Synergy¹⁰: provider definitions and method
IEA¹: report text and scenarios
European Commission¹⁸: proposal text
Operator reports⁵⁶⁷: boundaries for PUE and water

A.6Publication acceptance record

Editorial self-check at evidence close. Every applicable item carries a disposition; the remaining items are review, approval and deposit.

Table A.9Publication acceptance record
Group	Area	Items	Pass	N/A	Pending
D1	Identity and scope	8	8	0	0
D2	Source and data	12	9	1	2
D3	Analysis and models	12	3	8	1
D4	Findings and claims	9	8	0	1
D5	Figures, tables, maps	10	6	2	2
D6	Editorial and citations	10	8	0	2
D7	Review and approval	13	0	0	13
D8	Artefact and design	12	7	0	5
D9	Registry and release	9	0	0	9

Publication gate

Conditions met: 14 of 23 at evidence close
Blocking problems: none recorded
Open conditions: reviews, approval of the exact digest, deposit, registry pointer

Not applicable at baseline

Model runs: first runs in Q1 2027
Maps: plates in Q2 2027
Waivers: none

A.7Status words

Table A.10The status every value carries
Status	What it means
Observed	Measured directly and published by the source.
Reported	Published statistics of an official or institutional source.
Declared	Stated by the body concerned; not independently measured.
Estimated	A Nexus estimate from cited evidence, with its method in Annex A.
Modelled	Produced by a stated model from cited inputs.
Inferred	Reasoned from cited evidence; not measured.
Forecast	A projection by the cited source.
Simulated	A simulation result under stated assumptions.
Scenario	A conditional statement under stated assumptions; never a prediction.
Expert input	Expert judgement, recorded with its basis.
Candidate	Proposed for a later edition; not yet evidence.
Evidence-quality levels (EQL 1 to 5) grade the source behind a value; they are not a score of the subject.

A.8How the edition is made, released and corrected

Every edition is built from a sealed evidence cut, reviewed under three keys, signed and deposited before any site shows it as published; corrections go to Nexus Standards as change proposals and feed the next cut.

Step	What happens	Source
01 Evidence arrives from the pillars	Foundry seals observations and indicator series, Universe hands over after-action and scenario findings, and contributions are screened at every gateway, including this site’s.
02 The cut is sealed	On the cut date the evidence is pinned under one identifier, so anyone can rebuild the edition from exactly what it was built on.
03 The edition is assembled	The edition is drafted from its template and content pack. Agents may draft; they never publish and never decide.
04 The keys turn	At the publisher of record the truth key comes first: every value is checked against its source or stated method before the meaning and capital keys turn. No edition moves on until every key has been turned by a named steward.
05 The gate opens	A named approver releases one exact digest of the edition; any change after this point is a new version, never a silent edit.
06 Signed and deposited	The PDF, the web edition and the data bundle are signed together with a manifest and an RO-Crate description, and deposited on Zenodo with a concept and a version DOI.
07 Published on its desk’s site	Only then does the edition show as published on its desk’s Reports site, and the Collection lists it as a part.
08 Corrections go to Standards	Method and correction findings go to Nexus Standards as change proposals; citations, corrections and new contributions feed the next evidence cut.

A teaching model of the process, not a forecast and not a record of any run; dates and counts on this page come from the programme record. Sources: Reports governance at GCRI Canada (2026); Zenodo, repository of record for Reports deposits (2026).

Lifecycle, one state at a time: Draft, Computed, Evidence bound, Reviewed, Approved for release, Published, Corrected, Superseded. This edition is a draft.

A.9Glossary and abbreviations

Table A.11Series terms
Term	Meaning
Baseline Edition	the inaugural annual edition that fixes the reference state for the series
WEFH+B	water, energy, food, health and biodiversity, the national nexus core
Coupling	a typed dependency through which one system transmits to another
Protection gap	the share of losses not covered by insurance
Capability ladder	LISTED → EXISTS → ADEQUATE → TESTED → DEMONSTRATED
EQL	evidence-quality level, 1–5
Evidence cut	a frozen resolution of exact sources and versions
NNC · NLC · NWG	National Nexus Consortium · National Leadership Council · National Working Groups

Table A.12Abbreviations used in this edition
Abbreviation	Expansion
CADA	Cloud and AI Development Act
CMA	Competition and Markets Authority
DMA	Digital Markets Act
DNS	Domain Name System
DORA	Digital Operational Resilience Act
EDGE	computing at or near the data source
FY	fiscal year
MEC	Multi-access Edge Computing
ML	megalitre
PUE	power usage effectiveness
TWh	terawatt-hour
WUE	water use effectiveness

A.10Technical annex

Table A.13Technical annex
Item	Annex	Contents	Status
A.1	Indicator definitions	the global indicator set, with units and sources	IN THIS EDITION
A.2	Coupling strengths	the twenty-cell matrix and its rationale	IN THIS EDITION
A.3	Scenario specification	SCN-XT08-DEP-01 assumptions and signposts	IN THIS EDITION
A.4	Capability placements	rung evidence for fifteen functions	IN THIS EDITION
A.5	Model diagnostics	first runs and validation	2027
A.6	Sensitivity analyses	influence of coupling strengths	2027
A.7	Cluster notes	cards for the major data centre and cloud region clusters	2027
A.8	Review statements	pass-by-pass review record	AT RELEASE

A.1 · indicator definition: power usage effectiveness

Construct: ratio of total facility energy to the energy used by IT equipment
Unit: ratio, 1.0 or higher
Method: continuous metering at the facility, as described by one operator⁵
Source: operator environmental reports⁵⁷; definition in ISO/IEC 30134-2⁴¹
Uncertainty: boundaries differ by operator; reported industry averages range from 1.25 to 1.56
Known limits: says nothing about water, carbon or the useful work done

Notes

Numbers are the edition’s reference numbers, so a note reads the same in every chapter. The full list, with every source and its licence, is in Annex C. Annex C, references

19European Commission (ed.), Energy Efficiency Directive (policy page; states a data centre energy efficiency package planned for the third quarter of 2026 and links to reporting of data centre energy consumption; no threshold or dates on the page). Directorate-General for Energy, Brussels. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
35UNVERIFIED, not opened: Directive (EU) 2023/1791 on energy efficiency, Article 12 on data centre reporting, Official Journal of the European Union, 2023, cited from memory; the page returned no content. Observation year 2023. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
1UNVERIFIED, not opened: IEA (ed.), Energy and AI (data centres about 415 TWh in 2024, about 1.5% of global electricity; about 945 TWh in the 2030 base case; about 1,200 TWh in 2035 with a range of 700 to 1,700), taken from search-result summaries; the report pages returned access errors. International Energy Agency, Paris. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
9UNVERIFIED, not opened: Uptime Institute (ed.), Global Data Center Survey 2025 (average PUE 1.54; power the cause of 45% of outages), taken from search-result summaries; the survey page returned an access error. Uptime Institute, New York. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
11UK Competition and Markets Authority (ed.), Cloud services market investigation (case page; final decision published 31 July 2025; recommends prioritising strategic market status investigations of Microsoft and AWS; board decision expected in the first quarter of 2026; the decision documents were not opened). Competition and Markets Authority, London. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
39UNVERIFIED, not opened: UK Competition and Markets Authority (ed.), Cloud services market investigation final decision report, 31 July 2025 and 1 August 2025, cited from the case page [11]; the report documents were not opened. Competition and Markets Authority, London. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
12European Commission (ed.), Commission opens market investigations into cloud computing services under the Digital Markets Act (announcement of 18 November 2025; two investigations on whether AWS and Microsoft Azure should be designated and one on whether the DMA fits cloud). Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology, Brussels. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
14UNVERIFIED, not opened: trade press reports of mid-2026 that the Commission informed Amazon and Microsoft of a preliminary view that they should be designated as gatekeepers for cloud, taken from search-result summaries; the one article fetched returned an access error. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
18Euronews (ed.), EU Cloud and AI Development Act gets mixed reception (news article of 22 June 2026; three pillars; aim to triple European data centre capacity in five to seven years; acceleration zones within six months; 12-month maximum permit procedure; four assurance levels; reactions; press report of the proposal, not the proposal text). Euronews, Lyon. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
17European Securities and Markets Authority (ed.), Digital Operational Resilience Act (page; applies from 17 January 2025; lists materials on critical ICT third-party provider designation; no designations on the page). ESMA, Paris. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
38UNVERIFIED, not opened: Regulation (EU) 2022/2554 on digital operational resilience for the financial sector (DORA), Official Journal of the European Union, 2022, cited from memory; the ESMA page [17] was read instead. Observation year 2022. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
20Amazon Web Services (ed.), Summary of the Amazon DynamoDB Service Disruption in the Northern Virginia (US-EAST-1) Region (post-event summary; 19 October 11:48 PM to 20 October 2:20 PM PDT; latent race condition in the DNS management system for the regional endpoint; services and times listed; operator report). Amazon Web Services, Seattle. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
21Google Cloud (ed.), Incident report for the Service Control outage of 12 June 2025 (status page; 10:51 to 18:18 PDT by the incident header; mini report gives different times; policy data with blank fields caused a null pointer crash in Service Control; operator report). Google, Mountain View. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
22Cloudflare (ed.), Cloudflare outage on November 18, 2025 (blog post; start 11:20 UTC; core traffic largely restored 14:30 UTC; full recovery 17:06 UTC; Bot Management feature file doubled in size and exceeded a limit of 200 features; not caused by a cyber attack, per the operator). Cloudflare, San Francisco. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
30ETSI (ed.), Multi-access Edge Computing (technology page; industry specification group; news item of 31 October 2025 on Phase 4 specifications and a white paper; no counts on the page). European Telecommunications Standards Institute, Sophia Antipolis. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
2Shehabi, A. et al., 2024 United States Data Center Energy Usage Report, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, published 19 December 2024, DOI 10.71468/P1WC7Q (publication page; the page gives authors and a scenario range to 2028 but no figures; figures read in the DOE summary [3]). Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley. Observation year 2023. Accessed 2026-11-03. doi:10.71468/P1WC7Q back
3US Department of Energy (ed.), DOE releases new report evaluating increase in electricity demand from data centres (20 December 2024; about 4.4% of US electricity in 2023; 6.7 to 12% projected for 2028; 58 TWh in 2014 and 176 TWh in 2023). US Department of Energy, Washington. Observation year 2023. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
10Synergy Research Group (ed.), Q2 Cloud Market Passes $143 Billion; Highest Growth Rate in Eight Years (release of 30 July 2026; Amazon 28%, Microsoft 20%, Google 15%; quarterly revenue USD 143.4 billion; growth 43%; definition IaaS, PaaS and hosted private cloud; industry analyst). Synergy Research Group, Reno. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
5Google (ed.), 2025 Environmental Report (PDF; fiscal year 2024; data centre electricity consumption up 27%, data centre energy emissions down 12%, fleet PUE 1.09 against a stated industry average of 1.56, water consumption up 28%; company-reported). Google, Mountain View. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
6Microsoft (ed.), 2025 Environmental Data Fact Sheet (PDF; fiscal year ended 30 June 2024; Table 6 electricity consumed within the organisation 29,829,540 MWh in FY24 and 23,567,502 in FY23; Table 9 water consumption 5,807 ML in FY24 and 7,844 in FY23 after a new estimation approach; company-reported, section 1 reviewed by an external firm). Microsoft, Redmond. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
7Amazon (ed.), 2024 Amazon Sustainability Report (PDF; AWS global PUE 1.15 in 2024 against a stated public cloud industry average of 1.25 and 1.63 for on-premises data centres, citing IDC; AWS water use effectiveness 0.15 L per kWh in 2024; company-reported). Amazon, Seattle. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
41UNVERIFIED, not opened: ISO and IEC (eds.), ISO/IEC 30134-2 Information technology, data centres, key performance indicators, part 2, power usage effectiveness (PUE), cited from memory. International Organization for Standardization, Geneva. Observation year 2016. Accessed 2026-11-03.back

Cite this annex

Valadbaygi, S. (Ed.). (2026). Annex A: Methodology. In Exponential Technology Report 2026: Cloud, Edge and Distributed Computing (Baseline Edition 2026, Report No. NR-XTECH-CLOUD-GLOBAL-2026-BASELINE) [Draft under review]. The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI).

Every citation form of the whole report, BibTeX and RIS included, is on the edition home. Cite this report

Name	Purpose	Duration	Party
`wordpress_*`cookie	Strictly necessaryThis site	Until you sign out	First party
`wordpress_logged_in_*`cookie	Strictly necessaryThis site	Until you sign out, or 14 days	First party
`wordpress_sec_*`cookie	Strictly necessaryThis site	Until you sign out, or 14 days	First party
`wordpress_test_cookie`cookie	Strictly necessaryThis site	Session	First party
`wp-settings-*`cookie	Strictly necessaryThis site	1 year	First party
`wp-postpass_*`cookie	Strictly necessaryThis site	10 days	First party
`comment_author_*`cookie	Strictly necessaryThis site	About 347 days	First party
`wpEmojiSettingsSupports`browser storage	Strictly necessaryThis site	Session	First party
`nexus_consent`cookie	Strictly necessaryPrivacy choices	180 days	First party
`nexus_consent_id`cookie	Strictly necessaryPrivacy choices	180 days	First party
`nexus_consent_reset`cookie	Strictly necessaryPrivacy choices	Session	First party
`wp_consent_*`cookie	Strictly necessaryPrivacy choices	180 days	First party
`nexus_consent`browser storage	Strictly necessaryPrivacy choices	180 days	First party
`nx_theme`browser storage	Preferences and functionalDisplay preferences	Until you change it	First party
`nexus.theme.default`browser storage	Preferences and functionalDisplay preferences	Until you change it	First party
`bx-color-mode`browser storage	Preferences and functionalDisplay preferences	Until you change it	First party
`bx-color-mode-against`browser storage	Preferences and functionalDisplay preferences	Until you change it	First party
`nexus.embed.theme`browser storage	Preferences and functionalDisplay preferences	Until you change it	First party
`buddyx_dark_mode`browser storage	Preferences and functionalDisplay preferences	Until you change it	First party
`buddyx_color_mode_against`browser storage	Preferences and functionalDisplay preferences	Until you change it	First party
`nexus.a11y`browser storage	Preferences and functionalDisplay preferences	Until you change it	First party
`nexus.dock`browser storage	Preferences and functionalDisplay preferences	Until you change it	First party
`bp-activity`browser storage	Strictly necessaryCommunity directories (BuddyPress)	As the provider sets it	First party
`bp-groups`browser storage	Strictly necessaryCommunity directories (BuddyPress)	As the provider sets it	First party
`bp-members`browser storage	Strictly necessaryCommunity directories (BuddyPress)	As the provider sets it	First party
`bp-blogs`browser storage	Strictly necessaryCommunity directories (BuddyPress)	As the provider sets it	First party
`bp-messages`browser storage	Strictly necessaryCommunity directories (BuddyPress)	As the provider sets it	First party