As far as I know, Proton own their own physical servers in each VPN location [https://protonvpn.com/blog/vpn-servers-high-risk-countries], so this would be part of a Co-location service offered by Datacentre's to Proton Technologies AG.
Proton, however cannot control where the power comes from in each datacentre or how it's distributed.
Their maybe times of loss of power from the grid that will make the UPS's kick in (batteries) and if it's over a certain period of time, like more than 30 mins, a generator would kick in, which is likely to be a big diesel generator, which will increase the CO2 impact significantly.
However, saying that, use API's from electricitymap.org. To get an idea of the power source from the Grid to the datacentre at a high level overview.
This will give you the CO2 impact of a countries power grid.
So in order to do this, the ProtonVPN apps could integrate the API's from electricitymap.org to enable a feature within the Profiles to include "Lowest CO2 Impact", which will communicate to electricitymap.org to get the data.
However, then you have to think, who owns electricitymap.org? what is their privacy policy? who do they share data with? what data will they collect via the API?
electricitymap.org is an Open Source project, so it should be fully auditable and clear how the data gets to the user, this is something Proton would have to dig into.
So with this, Proton could employ the API feed from electricitymap.org to do the following:
1. Use of electricitymap.org's API to find the lowest CO2 impact country
2. Find the fastest server within that country
3. connect to the server
However, electricitymap.org's data doesn't seem to cover the whole world, most European countries are on the platform, but there's a lot of countries that aren't on there, so it might not be a feasible thing for Proton to do.
That and the fact that users would probably want to find a specfic Datacentre with the lowest carbon footprint.. which isn't really possible.
The other solution to this, is if Proton employ a Enviromental Policy (which I cannot find on their website) and put in the policy that they will move to Datacentres that offer 100% renewable electricy from the likes of Ecotricity (in the UK)... basically a energy provider that will match the power usage with PPA's Power Purchasing Agreements, to directly buy energy from electric generators to put back into the grid, thereby investing in renewable energy.
I think the latter solution would be the better way to go for Proton overall, not just for the VPN business but for Protonmail too!
Adding a feature like you suggested wouldn't solve the issue of the CO2 footprint added by using VPN's, as, unless all their Datacentre providers have some way of measuring their CO2 footprint and posting that to their customers in real time, it won't work.
The datacentres would also need offering customers the option to buy 100% renewable energy as part of the co-location services, which I don't think that many Datacentres offer this.
However, there are some Datacentres that give the option of using a energy provider that uses 100% renewable energy with their Co-location packages, I am aware in the UK that Telehouse North gives this option to buy from N-Power with 100% renewable energy, I am not sure about other, global datacentres.[https://www.telehouse.net/about-telehouse/environmentally-responsible-colocation/]
Only then, Proton could list servers that use 100% renewable energy, but then like I said before, if there is an outage, will Proton update the list to exclude the DC on Generator power?
This is a good suggestion though, I would really like to see if Proton will go ahead with this.
Chris
As far as I know, Proton own their own physical servers in each VPN location [https://protonvpn.com/blog/vpn-servers-high-risk-countries], so this would be part of a Co-location service offered by Datacentre's to Proton Technologies AG.
Proton, however cannot control where the power comes from in each datacentre or how it's distributed.
Their maybe times of loss of power from the grid that will make the UPS's kick in (batteries) and if it's over a certain period of time, like more than 30 mins, a generator would kick in, which is likely to be a big diesel generator, which will increase the CO2 impact significantly.
However, saying that, use API's from electricitymap.org. To get an idea of the power source from the Grid to the datacentre at a high level overview.
This will give you the CO2 impact of a countries power grid.
So in order to do this, the ProtonVPN apps could integrate the API's from electricitymap.org to enable a feature within the Profiles to include "Lowest CO2 Impact", which will communicate to electricitymap.org to get the data.
However, then you have to think, who owns electricitymap.org? what is their privacy policy? who do they share data with? what data will they collect via the API?
electricitymap.org is an Open Source project, so it should be fully auditable and clear how the data gets to the user, this is something Proton would have to dig into.
So with this, Proton could employ the API feed from electricitymap.org to do the following:
1. Use of electricitymap.org's API to find the lowest CO2 impact country
2. Find the fastest server within that country
3. connect to the server
However, electricitymap.org's data doesn't seem to cover the whole world, most European countries are on the platform, but there's a lot of countries that aren't on there, so it might not be a feasible thing for Proton to do.
That and the fact that users would probably want to find a specfic Datacentre with the lowest carbon footprint.. which isn't really possible.
The other solution to this, is if Proton employ a Enviromental Policy (which I cannot find on their website) and put in the policy that they will move to Datacentres that offer 100% renewable electricy from the likes of Ecotricity (in the UK)... basically a energy provider that will match the power usage with PPA's Power Purchasing Agreements, to directly buy energy from electric generators to put back into the grid, thereby investing in renewable energy.
I think the latter solution would be the better way to go for Proton overall, not just for the VPN business but for Protonmail too!
Adding a feature like you suggested wouldn't solve the issue of the CO2 footprint added by using VPN's, as, unless all their Datacentre providers have some way of measuring their CO2 footprint and posting that to their customers in real time, it won't work.
The datacentres would also need offering customers the option to buy 100% renewable energy as part of the co-location services, which I don't think that many Datacentres offer this.
However, there are some Datacentres that give the option of using a energy provider that uses 100% renewable energy with their Co-location packages, I am aware in the UK that Telehouse North gives this option to buy from N-Power with 100% renewable energy, I am not sure about other, global datacentres.[https://www.telehouse.net/about-telehouse/environmentally-responsible-colocation/]
Only then, Proton could list servers that use 100% renewable energy, but then like I said before, if there is an outage, will Proton update the list to exclude the DC on Generator power?
This is a good suggestion though, I would really like to see if Proton will go ahead with this.