Quick Start

Get up and running with environmental impact tracking in 5 minutes.

Prerequisites

  • OpenClaw installed and configured
  • Gateway running: openclaw gateway run

1. Generate Some Traces

Green tracking is automatic. Just use OpenClaw normally:

openclaw chat "Hello, world!"

Each request generates a carbon trace with provider, model, token counts, estimated CO2, water usage, and a confidence score.

Run a few more requests so there's data to look at:

openclaw chat "Explain the greenhouse effect in two sentences."
openclaw chat "What is a carbon offset?"

2. Check Your Impact

View your carbon footprint summary:

openclaw green status

When the gateway is reachable, this fetches live data from the gateway API. You should see output like:

Environmental Impact [PASSIVE]
  Grid carbon: 400 gCO2/kWh (default)  |  Confidence: low (32%)

  Carbon: 12.4 kg CO2eq    Water: 156 L    Requests: 1,847    Since: Jan 15

  ~ Driving 62 km  |  ~ 1,245 phone charges  |  ~ 1 tree for 20 hours

Provider Breakdown
  Anthropic    1,500 requests    10.2 kg CO2    (82%)
  OpenAI         347 requests     2.3 kg CO2    (18%)

Top Models (by total carbon)
  claude-sonnet-4     8.1 kg    (65%)
  gpt-4o-mini         2.3 kg    (18%)
  claude-haiku-4      1.1 kg     (9%)

3. Open the Dashboard

openclaw green dashboard

This prints a URL like:

Dashboard: http://localhost:18789/__openclaw__/api/green/dashboard

Open that URL in your browser. The gateway serves the dashboard HTML on-the-fly — no files are written to disk. You should see:

  • Summary cards — Total CO2, water, request count, avg per request, confidence
  • Real-world equivalents — Car km, phone charges, tree absorption days
  • Emissions over time — Daily CO2 line chart
  • Provider breakdown — Doughnut chart by provider
  • Intensity metrics — TCFD per-million-tokens and per-query benchmarks
  • Recent traces — Table of the last 20 requests

The dashboard auto-refreshes every 30 seconds.

4. Try a Remote Gateway

If your gateway is on a different host (sandbox, VM, remote server), use --host and --port:

openclaw green status --host 10.0.0.5 --port 9999
openclaw green dashboard --host 10.0.0.5 --port 9999

To avoid passing flags every time, set the OPENCLAW_GATEWAY_HOST environment variable:

export OPENCLAW_GATEWAY_HOST=10.0.0.5
openclaw green status
openclaw green dashboard

5. Verify Offline Fallback

If the gateway is unreachable, the CLI falls back to the local SQLite database:

# Point at a port where nothing is listening
openclaw green status --port 1

# Still works — uses the local DB at ~/.openclaw/green.db

This is useful for reviewing data when the gateway is down, or on a different machine from the gateway.

6. View Intensity Metrics

For TCFD-style carbon intensity reporting:

openclaw green intensity

Carbon Intensity Metrics (TCFD)

  Per million tokens: 142.50 gCO2eq
  Per API call:       6.7200 gCO2eq

  Uncertainty range:  70% - 130%

7. Export for Reporting

Generate reports for compliance frameworks:

# GHG Protocol format
openclaw green export --format ghg-protocol --period 2025-Q1

# CDP Climate format
openclaw green export --format cdp --period 2025

# TCFD format with baseline comparison
openclaw green export --format tcfd --period 2025 --baseline 2024

8. Set Reduction Targets (Optional)

Create SBTi-aligned emission reduction targets:

openclaw green targets:add \
  --name "Net Zero 2030" \
  --base-year 2025 \
  --target-year 2030 \
  --reduction 50 \
  --pathway 1.5C

Track progress:

openclaw green targets

Learning Module

The Learning module follows the same patterns. If you have learning tracking enabled:

# View learning layer status (API-first, falls back to local DB)
openclaw learning status

# Open the learning dashboard
openclaw learning dashboard

Both commands support the same --host and --port options and OPENCLAW_GATEWAY_HOST environment variable.

Next Steps