Environment Variables

This Week in Green Software, host Chris Adams is joined by Gabi Beyer and Brendan Kamp from re:cinq to talk about the recent initiatives to and consequences of the prolonging of the lifecycle of technology. The challenges of measuring carbon emissions in personal laptops and cloud services are discussed, highlighting the complexities of quantifying environmental impact, as well as companies reporting on these metrics. Tune in for a lively discussion on sustainable software development.

Learn more about our people:

• Chris Adams: LinkedIn | GitHub | Website
• Gabi Beyer: LinkedIn | GitHub
• Brendan Kamp: LinkedIn | GitHub | Website

Find out more about the GSF:

• The Green Software Foundation Website 
• Sign up to the Green Software Foundation Newsletter

News:

• £200m Octopus backing to heat up pioneering Deep Green tech [11:36]
• 2nd-hand phone market hurt by users sweating devices longer • The Register [13:53]
• Google endorses Right-to-Repair law in Oregon • The Register [17:24]
• Chromebook expiration date, repair issues 'bad for people and planet' [18:16]
• Google promises decade of updates for newer Chromebooks • The Register
• Fit for 55 - The EU's plan for a green transition - Consilium [20:07]
• The anti-greenwashing rule: Proposed FCA guidance | South Africa | Global law firm | Norton Rose Fulbright [20:18]
• Baselining Software Carbon Emissions - A Use Case by UBS | GSF [20:54]
• Perf-icient Measuring of Laptop Energy Consumption and CO2e | re:cinq [21:48]
• ABN AMRO Embarks on Hybrid Cloud Transformation [24:54]
• GitHub - re-cinq/cloud-carbon: A open telemetry exporter to calculate the carbon emissions generated by your cloud infrastructure [25:46]
• Amazon claims it was the world's largest buyer of renewable energy in 2023 [26:41]
• How much power do hyperscalers use, and how much would it cost to go fossil-free 24 / 7 ? | Chris Adams [27:57]
• https://github.com/Green-Software-Foundation/real-time-cloud/issues/20 [30:59] 
• Tripling the lifespan of servers: why we retrofitted 14,000 servers | Scaleway [35:39]

Events:

• Carbon Hack 24: Where measurement meets innovation, and impact knows no bounds [39:52] 

Resources:

• Civo.com [07:26]
• Leaf.cloud [08:06]
• What Is Embodied Carbon? And What Does it Have To Do With Sustainable Software? | re:cinq 
• GitHub - re-cinq/cloud-carbon: A open telemetry exporter to calculate the carbon emissions generated by your cloud infrastructure
• https://github.com/Green-Software-Foundation/policy-wg/issues/59 [24:19] 
• Projects | GSF [26:16]
• The Week in Green Software: Code Green and Clean Power | GSF [31:15] 

If you enjoyed this episode then please either:

• Follow, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts
• Follow and rate on Spotify
• Watch our videos on The Green Software Foundation YouTube Channel!

Connect with us on Twitter, Github and LinkedIn!

TRASNCRIPT BELOW:

Brendan Kamp: Transparency, right? I mean, this is the key for the cloud providers, I feel, at the moment, is just become more transparent about some of the, this data so that we can do the work to calculate, but just give us the data to do it, right?

Chris Adams: Hello, and welcome to Environment Variables, brought to you by the Green Software Foundation. In each episode, we discuss the latest news and events surrounding green software. On our show, you can expect candid conversations with top experts in their field who have a passion for how to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of software. I'm your host, Chris Adams. Hello, and welcome to another episode of Environment Variables, where we bring you the latest news and updates from the world of sustainable software development. I'm your host, Chris Adams. We don't shy away from diving into the details of sustainability in software development in this podcast. But if we want this to be a field that has widespread adoption, we need to make sure there's space for people entering the field from the wider digital sector, rather than being a specialist place that only really accepts people who have a PhD in green IT already. And it's also good to know about what's happening in the wider world, too. So last year, we started a new format of this podcast that we call This Week in Green Software, which was a sort of roundup of stories and links related to. Yes, you guessed it, Green Software, often with memb...

Join TWiGS host Chris Adams in talking to Kristina Devochko, tech lead of the Environmental Sustainability TAG at the Cloud Native Computing Foundation. Kristina shares her journey from economics to tech sustainability, and eventually joining this Technical Advisory Group. Further, they discuss the mission and projects of the group, as well as how anyone interested and willing is able to contribute. She elaborates on her experience of diving into this new field with no prior knowledge and acts as a reminder that no matter how scary it seems, you can do it too.

Learn more about our people:

• Chris Adams: LinkedIn | GitHub | Website
• Kristina Devochko: LinkedIn | Website

Find out more about the GSF:

• The Green Software Foundation Website 
• Sign up to the Green Software Foundation Newsletter

News:

• TAG Environmental Sustainability [09:56]
• The Week in Green Software: Carbon Aware Spatial Shifting [15:13]
• Kepler | [16:07]
• GSF Oslo Meetup group [34:08]

Events:

• CNCF Cloud Native Sustainability Week (2023) [14:43]
• Green Software Foundation Oslo - February Meetup [34:31]
• Carbon Hack 24 | Online | 26th Feb to 15th March [39:02] 

Resources:

• Cloud Native Computing Foundation [01:53]
• Kristina’s cat, Penelope [02:51]
• Kristina’s cat, Sofie [02:51]
• TAG ENV | Linktree [09:29]
• Kepler GitHub repository | CNCF 
• Exploring Kepler’s potentials: unveiling cloud application power consumption | CNCF [23:23]
• Environmental Sustainability Glossary [24:33]
• Green Reviews WG task board[24:45]
• Green Reviews WG project repository [26:45]
• [WG Green Reviews] Design Document 
• TAG ENV Slack Channel [31:31]
• GitHub - cncf/tag-env-sustainability: 🌳🌍♻️ TAG Environmental Sustainability [31:44]
• Green Software Champions | Speakers [35:38]

If you enjoyed this episode then please either:

• Follow, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts
• Follow and rate on Spotify
• Watch our videos on The Green Software Foundation YouTube Channel!

Connect with us on Twitter, Github and LinkedIn!

TRANSCRIPT BELOW:

Kristina Devochko: You know, there weren't many there at that meeting, but they were so passionately discussing the different topics around the topic of sustainability in tech, specifically in the cloud native technologies. And I really loved the passion and interest from those who were there.

Chris Adams: Hello, and welcome to Environment Variables, brought to you by the Green Software Foundation. In each episode, we discuss the latest news and events surrounding green software. On our show, you can expect candid conversations with top experts in their field who have a passion for how to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of software.

I'm your host, Chris Adams.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Environment Variables, where we bring you the latest news and updates from the world of sustainable software development. I'm your host, Chris Adams. Well, we talk a lot about green software on this podcast. If you've listened to some of these episodes, you'll realize that cloud is a really, really, really big part of green software now.

And last year, the Cloud Native Computing Foundation set up a sustainability focused working group. And given that it's the new year, 2024, it seemed worth checking in on it to see what's new. So today, I'm joined by Kristina Devochko, who's part of the CNCF and some of these groups. Kristina, thank you very much for joining us on the course.

Should I give you a bit of space to introduce yourself and talk about where you're coming from today?

Kristina Devochko: Yes, of course. Hello Chris and hello everyone listening into this episode. Thanks for inviting me. My name is Kristina Devochko. I am a platform engineer at Tietoevry and I'm based in Oslo, Norway, and I am very excited to be here. I am also a Microsoft MVP and a CNCF ambassador. And what comes out of that is that I do a bunch of different activities in the tech community that are mainly related to the topics of cloud computing, green tech, Kubernetes. And one of such activities is my involvement in the CNCF Technical Advisory Group for environmental sustainability, which kind of also correlates with, with a bit of my personal passion for this domain.

And a fun fact about me is that I am what you can call a cat mom at heart. And actually yesterday, right before we joined today with you, Chris, for this podcast, I, me and my husband welcomed two new family members, two adopted kittens that I will run to after we are done with this episode and kind of keep, continue training them to feel safe in their new home.

Chris Adams: Wow, I was not expecting cat pics so early in 2024, but it sounds like we might need to have some reference to this, because you can't talk about cats without sending pictures of cats. So maybe that's something we add to the show notes.

Kristina Devochko: Yeah, that's, by the way, one thing. I love adding the ...

Asim Hussain is joined by guests Srini Rakhunathan and Navveen Balani, the technical leads on the Impact Framework. They delve into how this innovative tool effectively models, measures, simulates, and monitors the environmental impacts of software across various platforms. The conversation explores the framework's unique ability to handle diverse environments, from cloud systems to mobile devices, with an emphasis on the practicality and necessity of measuring software emissions accurately. Highlights include intriguing insights into integrating the Impact Framework with SCI Open Data and the future of green software development. This episode is packed with valuable information and thought-provoking discussions that offer a glimpse into the future of sustainable software.

Learn more about our people:

• Asim Hussain: LinkedIn / Twitter
• Navveen Balani: LinkedIn
• Srini Rakhunathan: LinkedIn 

Topics:

• The Impact Framework  | GSF [3:00]

Find out more about the GSF:

• The Green Software Foundation Website 
• Sign up to the Green Software Foundation Newsletter

Events:

• Carbon Hack 24 | Online | 26th Feb to 15th March [40:08]

Resources:

• The Software Carbon Intensity Specification | GSF [3:44]
• CarbonQL | CarbonQL [09:19]
• Joseph Cook | Project Lead on IF [13:43]
• Kubernetes [16:45]
• Node.js [17:13]
• Cloud Carbon Footprint | Thoughtworks [21:18]
• Boavizta [21:32]
• Azure Functions [23:29]
• Cloud Instance Metadata Model [25:22]
• Teads Curve | Benjamin Davy of Teads [26:12]

If you enjoyed this episode then please either:

• Follow, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts
• Follow and rate on Spotify
• Watch our videos on The Green Software Foundation YouTube Channel!
• Connect with us on Twitter, Github and LinkedIn!

TRANSCRIPT BELOW:
That simplification that you can just download the code. You need to know a little bit of Node.js or Yarn or how to use it to just be able to run it. As long as you are able to do that, you're pretty much up and ready. Maybe we can even set up a timer, Asim, how long it takes for someone to run it. I bet it will not be more than five minutes.

Asim Hussain: Hello, and welcome to Environment Variables, brought to you by the Green Software Foundation. In each episode, we discuss the latest news and events surrounding green software. On our show, you can expect candid conversations with top experts in their field who have a passion for how to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of software. I'm your host, Asim Hussain. 

Welcome back to Environment Variables, the podcast that covers just about everything to do with sustainable software development. I'm your host, Asim Hussain. I'm the executive director of the Green Software Foundation here to navigate you through the evolving landscape of green software. In today's episode, we've got a special segment lined up to you, joining us are Srini Rakhunathan and Navveen Balani, the brilliant minds leading the project on a much anticipated Impact Framework from the Green Software Foundation. They're here to give us an insider's view of this revolutionary tool designed to model, measure, and simulate and monitor the environmental impacts of software. From cloud environments to your mobile devices, the Impact Framework is set to redefine how we understand and reduce the carbon footprint of our digital world. Before we dive in, let me introduce my esteemed guests and colleagues for this episode of Environment Variables. Navveen, how about, let's start off with you, please.

Navveen Balani: Yeah, thank you, Asim. Hello, everyone. I'm Navveen Balani. I'm Managing Director and Chief Technologist with Technology Sustainability Innovation Group at Accenture working on the intersection of technology and sustainability, and an active member of Green Software Foundation from its inception. Happy to be here and be part of this podcast.

Asim Hussain: Thank you, Navveen. And we also have Srini. Srini, do you want to give an introduction to yourself?

Srinivasan Rakhunathan: Definitely. Thanks, Asim. And wonderful to see you again, Navveen. I'm Srini. I'm part of Microsoft's cloud sustainability team, and I am a senior program manager. I work on sustainable hardware, and as part of Green Software Foundation, I got an opportunity to work on sustainable software with this amazing team.

So glad to be part of this call and happy to help.

Asim Hussain: Before we dive in, just a reminder that everything we talk about will be linked in the show notes below the episode. So I've got a couple of questions that maybe we can go through, but I actually thought, we were having a chat before that, I actually thought it might be interesting for everybody to understand the journey of Impact Framework, because that might actually help people understand what it even is.

I struggle to even explain. I think that's one of the, one of the things I want to chat to you all about is like, how do you even talk about Impact Framework to others? Because I, it can be so many different things to so many different people. It's a little bit challenging. But, yeah. I thought it might be interesting to talk about, you know, the early days, like years and years ago. And I remember, this is how I remember it. So I remember it as: we were all working on the Software Carbon Intensity Specification together, getting really deep and diving into a lot of that stuff, and then we knew we needed to start actually using the SCI and writing case studies. Srini, I believe you were the first person in the ...

Host Chris Adams is joined by Arik Smith and Cameron Cash from Thoughtworks in this episode of Environment Variables. Together they discuss the Cloud Carbon Footprint (CCF) tool and the role it plays in sustainable software development. Join this conversation as they nerd out together about the future of measuring carbon in the cloud, open source collaboration, and some cool posters in the background.

Learn more about our people:

• Chris Adams: LinkedIn | GitHub | Website
• Arik Smith: LinkedIn
• Cameron Casher: LinkedIn

Find out more about the GSF:

• The Green Software Foundation Website 
• Sign up to the Green Software Foundation Newsletter

News:

• Responsible Technology Playbook: Tools for the United Nations | Thoughtworks [06:40] 
• GCS23: Cameron Casher on Responsible Tech & Cloud Carbon Footprint [07:05]
• Cloud Carbon Footprint [09:25]
• Etsy Engineering | Cloud Jewels: Estimating kWh in the Cloud [12:41] 
• 20231124 - green coding summit - ai environmental impacts assessment workshop [26:19]
• 20231124 - green coding summit - infra/cloud environmental impacts assessment workshop [26:52]

Resources:

• Arik’s awesomely distracting looking poster [02:36]
• Notes from the SDIA Green Coding summit [07:05]
• (GreenOps) A forecast of green clouds | Thoughtworks [08:18]
• Green Software Patterns [08:24]
• Electricity Maps API Documentation [28:36]
• Software Carbon Intensity (SCI) Specification Project | GSF [32:38]
• GitHub - cloud-carbon-footprint/cloud-carbon-footprint [38:04]

If you enjoyed this episode then please either:

• Follow, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts
• Follow and rate on Spotify
• Watch our videos on The Green Software Foundation YouTube Channel!
• Connect with us on Twitter, Github and LinkedIn!

TRANSCRIPT BELOW:

Arik Smith: [00:00:00] At the end of the day, CCF is a community supported and collaborative tool, and I think that's the biggest and strongest part of all is that this isn't a methodology that one organization has owned or came up with, but that the, I want to say the entire industry who really cares about this subject has contributed and promoted growth within.

Chris Adams: Hello, and welcome to Environment Variables, brought to you by the Green Software Foundation. In each episode, we discuss the latest news and events surrounding green software. On our show, you can expect candid conversations with top experts in their field who have a passion for how to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of software. I'm your host, Chris Adams. Hello, and welcome to another episode of Environment Variables, where we bring you the latest news and updates from the world of sustainable software [00:01:00] development. I'm your host, Chris Adams. In our first episode of Environment Variables, we spoke about the team working on Cloud Carbon Footprint, about the subject of carbon calculation in the cloud. And a lot has happened since that episode. We've basically seen a spawn of imitators, and we've seen a launch of a number of native new platforms that various cloud providers use to help people understand the environmental impact of using digital services. Cloud Carbon Footprint has remained the open source reference, and as we'll discuss in more detail, parts of it end up making it into all kinds of other services these days. So it's been a while since we spoke about Cloud Carbon Footprint, or even Carbon Calculation in total. So joining me today are two of the main maintainers of the project to dive into some of the weeds on this. All right, today I'm joined by Cam and Arik. Folks, I'll just give you the space [00:02:00] to introduce yourselves.

Cam, if I give you the floor, then Arik, I guess you can introduce yourself after that.

Cameron Casher: Thanks, Chris. Really happy to be here. I'm Cameron Kasher. I work at ThoughtWorks on software, data, sustainability, general responsible tech, and really happy to talk to you today about Cloud Carbon Footprint.

Chris Adams: Cool, thank you. And Arik?

Arik Smith: Hey, I'm Arik Smith. I also work as a developer consultant at ThoughtWorks, mainly as a cloud SME and a green software specialist. But I am also excited to be here, so thanks for having me.

Chris Adams: You're very welcome. I'm excited here, but I'm also quite excited by that awesome looking poster that I can see inside the video. I'm afraid that you can't see it in the audio, but there looks like there's a Japanese poster behind you. Is that Zelda or something? Arik, can you please tell me what that is, because it's totally distracting, but it looks really awesome.

Arik Smith: Yeah, for sure. So behind me I have my home office, which is basically in my basement that I call my culture cave. So what [00:03:00] you're looking at is what I call my wall of culture, where I just hang up artwork that I usually find at local vendors around town, mainly around my favorite video games and movies.

So yeah, the poster is a poster with Link on it and in Japanese katakana, it says Zelda, but there's also some other stuff on there. I have an Avatar poster right next to it for The Last Airbender, and a Final Fantasy VII, and an Arcane League of Legends poster. Lots of fun stuff going on. 

Chris Adams: Wow that's an impressive nerd cave, and I think anyone who's been following Zelda this year will probably be excited about a reference to T...

In this episode we take a look back at another talk from our Decarb 2023 Event while we’re all on the New Year break at the GSF. Titled Driving Climate Change Solutions with AI, Charlotte Degot of CO2 AI and Diana Dimitrova from Boston Consulting Group talk about the Third Annual Carbon Emissions Survey titled Why Some Companies are Ahead in the Race to Net Zero. 

Learn more about our people:

• Charlotte Deogot: LinkedIn 
• Diana Dimitrova: LinkedIn

Find out more about the GSF:

• The Green Software Foundation Website 
• Sign up to the Green Software Foundation Newsletter

Topics:

• CO2 AI and BCG’s Third Annual Carbon Emissions Survey | Boston Consulting Group [2:55] 

Resources:

• CO2.AI | CO2AI [1:19]
• Boston Consulting Group | BCG [1:19]
• Klöckner & Co. [6:00]
• Nexigen® Data Services (PCF) | Klöckner & Co SE  [6:45]
• The Economist Group [8:55]
• CodeCarbon.io | Code Carbon [14:53]

If you enjoyed this episode then please either:

• Follow, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts
• Follow and rate on Spotify
• Watch our videos on The Green Software Foundation YouTube Channel!
• Connect with us on Twitter, Github and LinkedIn!

TRANSCRIPT BELOW:
Asim Hussain: Hello and welcome to Environment Variables, brought to you by the Green Software Foundation. In each episode, we discuss the latest news and events surrounding green software. On our show, you can expect candid conversations with top experts in their field who have a passion for how to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of software.

Chris Skipper: Welcome to another episode of Environment Variables. Happy New Year, and I hope you are all enjoying this holiday period and looking forward to 2024. Seeing as we're all on a bit of a break here at the Green Software Foundation, we've got another highlight from the recent Decarbonize Software 2023 event.

We'll be showcasing a talk on driving climate change solutions with AI. From Charlotte Degot, CEO and co founder of CO2 AI, and Diana Dimitrova, managing director and partner at BCG. They are introduced by the wonderful Namrata Narayan, director of communications and member relations at the GSF. So it will be her voice that you hear first.

So, without further ado, here's driving climate change solutions with AI.

Namrata Narayan: Now we're going to hear from another steering member, BCG, and their partner, CO2 AI. I'd like to welcome Charlotte Degot from CO2 AI and Diana Dimitrova from BCG. The GSF is focused on addressing the environmental impact of software. With the rise of AI, we wanted to take a moment at Decarb to discuss how this technology can assist our efforts to decarbonize software.

Charlotte and Diana are here to cover this topic and highlight the results from the Carbon Emission Survey Report that was just released. Charlotte and Diana, over to you.

Diana Dimitrova: Great. Thanks so much. And thanks so much for hosting us today. We're super pleased to be here. And as you mentioned, today was the launch date of our third annual survey that actually found some fascinating insights around green software and how that propels climate action globally. So Charlotte and I are thrilled to take you through it.

So maybe as a first step, we can just introduce ourselves. Charlotte.

Charlotte Degot: Yes, very nice to have us, I'm Charlotte Degot, I'm the founder and CEO of CO2 AI. Just in a few words, CO2 AI is a sustainability platform that helps large organizations on their end to end net zero journeys from measuring and reporting their emissions down to reducing and proving their impact.

Diana Dimitrova: Excellent. And, um, I'm Diana Dimitrova. I'm a managing director and partner, uh, in BCG, and I focus on building digital solutions for clients, um, that advance their climate goals, um, that's specifically in our unit called BCGx. I'm going to kick us off with the main findings, um, of the report, and, and let me just contextualize that a little bit.

So, we publish a third annual report around carbon emissions, uh, and measurement. It includes. 1,850 organizations that reported back to us. It does represent over 20 countries in 18 major industries. And based on the reported emissions, it's about 40 percent of global emissions. And the report is called Why Some Companies Are Ahead in the Race to Net Zero.

Now what we found, the unfortunate bit, which is the first column, is that comprehensive measurement of scope 1, 2, and 3 actually hasn't improved. It was 10 percent this year, it was 10 percent the year before, and 9 percent the year before that, so real stagnation there. Now, we did see some elements that gave us quite a bit of hope, and that was really in scope 3.

So in scope 3 measurement has landed at 53 percent or partial scope 3 measurement has landed at 53 percent which is up 19 percentage points in two years. So we are seeing organizations actually be selective of which categories they measure but really starting to get at scope 3. And more interestingly is they've actually set targets and that's the 12 percentage points that you see on the bottom there.

Organizations at this stage are setting targets for scope three categories at 35 percent rate, which is a notable improvement. And regionally, we are seeing changes and we are seeing certain regions pull ahead in the race. And again, this is a scope one, two, and the comprehensive measurement that they have.

South America, APAC are really pulling ahead when it comes to their measurement. And then finally, the most important bit is why are companies doing this? And 40 percent of the folks who responded are telling us, well, they do this because they're seeing a hundred million or more dollars in annual financial benefit when they get on the reduction journey.

So there's a real financial incentive for them to be tackling these massive challenges. And then let me tell you a little of how they did it on the next slide. So these companies are doing four things twice as well as the average organization. The first thing that they're doing well is they're collaborating with their suppliers, meaning they have workshops together, they have joint ta...

TWiGS host Chris Adams is joined by guest Savannah Goodman from Google, to bring you the latest news and updates from the world of sustainable software development. They discuss insights from Google’s Sustainability report, the need for a fossil fuel free internet by 2030 and the importance of microgrids and nanogrids. They also highlight Google's sustainability tools including Cloud Region Picker, ActiveAssist and  Carbon Footprint.

Learn more about our people:

• Chris Adams: LinkedIn | GitHub | Website
• Savannah Goodman: LinkedIn

Find out more about the GSF:

• The Green Software Foundation Website 
• Sign up to the Green Software Foundation Newsletter

Topics:

• We need a fossil fuel free internet by 2030  | Branch Magazine [6:38]
• Tesla Megapack | Microgrids & Tesla [12:27]
• Google Sustainability Goals | Google [21:19] 
• Google & Fervo Geothermal Partnership | Google  [22:58]
• Google Cloud Region Picker | Google [26:44]
• Google Active Assist | Google [29:20]
• Google Carbon Footprint | Google [30:13]
• The Realtime Cloud Project | Green Software Foundation [32:15]

Resources:

• Octopus Energy  [15:04]
• The Week in Green Software: Modelling Carbon Aware Software | Environment Variables episode with Iegor Riepen at TU Berlin [20:07]
• UN Global 24/7 Compact | UN [24:46]
• Vincent Poncet LinkedIn | Linux Foundation [32:08]

If you enjoyed this episode then please either:

• Follow, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts
• Follow and rate on Spotify
• Watch our videos on The Green Software Foundation YouTube Channel!
• Connect with us on Twitter, Github and LinkedIn!

TRANSCRIPT BELOW:

Savannah Goodman: [00:00:00] While it's important for us to reduce our own carbon footprint, we think the opportunity to provide these flexibility services to the grid will actually help drive broader system decarbonization and allow for broader carbon emission reduction.

Chris Adams: Hello, and welcome to another episode of This Week in Green Software, where we bring you the latest news and updates from the world of sustainable software development. your host, Chris Adams. when we talk about green software, whether you're diving into papers about carbon aware computing. or hearing someone talk about GreenOps, a new [00:01:00] variation of the term DevOps, or even as a consumer, looking at the work that the company's been doing to make it easier to understand how you can reduce the carbon footprint of things like flying. It's hard to escape the work of Google when you look at climate and tech. be honest, it's not that surprising. They operate at a scale that's hard for many of us to really comprehend. Alphabet, the holding company for Google, has a market capitalization of 1. 75 trillion dollars these days. And they use enough digital infrastructure to really care. Their own sustainability report in 2023 shows that Google used something in the region of 22 terawatt hours of electricity last year. This is not a small company. Since 2007, they've generally been one of the leaders when it comes to decarbonizing infrastructure. And recently, they set a public goal to match every hour of power they use with an hour of generation from carbon free sources by 2030. This is something we've seen a [00:02:00] number of organizations get behind, and even the UN with their recent 24 7 compact. So we know there's a lot of smart people working at Google, working on the greening of digital. And today, I'm joined by Savannah Goodman from Google to talk about the finer points of doing green software at scale. Hi Savannah, the floor is yours to introduce yourself.

Savannah Goodman: Thanks, Chris. Hi, everyone. I'm Savannah Goodman. I lead the data and software climate solutions team at Google, and I'm super excited to be here. I'm an energy nerd at heart, and I've been studying and working in the climate space for the last decade.

Chris Adams: Thank you, Savannah. Okay, so if you are new to this podcast, here's a quick reminder of how it tends to work. Uh, When we mention projects or papers or any links like that, we'll add them into the show notes. And if there's a thing that you heard us talk about that you'd really like to learn more about, please do leave a comment.

It really helps other people who are trying to actually learn things about this as well. The other thing I should probably do is introduce myself. My name is Chris [00:03:00] Adams. I work at the Green Web Foundation, a nonprofit focused on reaching an entirely fossil free internet by 2030. And I'm also one of the chairs of the policy work group inside the Green Software Foundation, which Google is also a member of. All right. I think that's pretty much it. Savannah, if you're happy for us to go and sitting comfortably, shall we start?

Savannah Goodman: Yeah, let's go for it.

Chris Adams: All right. Okay. So we're going to talk about some of the cool carbon intelligent computing stuff that Google does shortly, but before we dive into there, I figured it might help to talk a little bit about how you got here first, because as I understand it, you've worked with technology that interacts with grids at various scales in your career.

And if we start at the small end, I realize that if you're going to be talking about data centers, it helps developers to understand some of the principles that are behind the kind of power grids in the first place. And this is something you worked on before. And I think what I learned about was there was a pr...

From the recent Decarbonize Software 2023 event, this episode showcases a fireside chat on Responsible AI with Tammy McClellan from Microsoft and Jesse McCrosky from ThoughtWorks. Jesse shares his thoughts and experiences from years of working in the field of Sustainable Tech on the topics of risks, sustainability, and more regarding AI, before answering some questions from the audience. 

Learn more about our people:

• Sophie Trinder: LinkedIn
• Jesse McCrosky: LinkedIn | Website
• Tammy McClellan: LinkedIn

Find out more about the GSF:

• The Green Software Foundation Website 
• Sign up to the Green Software Foundation Newsletter

Events:

• Decarbonize Software | GSF 

Resources:

• AI Transparency in Practice | Mozilla Foundation [04:19] 
• Reducing bias and improving safety in DALL·E 2 | OpenAI [09:31] 
• Responsible AI: Fireside Chat | Decarb 2023 [18:41]

If you enjoyed this episode then please either:

• 
  Follow, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts
• Follow and rate on Spotify
• Watch our videos on The Green Software Foundation YouTube Channel!

Connect with us on Twitter, Github and LinkedIn!

TRANSCRIPT BELOW:

Asim Hussain: Hello, and welcome to Environment Variables brought to you by the Green Software Foundation. In each episode, we discuss the latest news and events surrounding green software. On our show, you can expect candid conversations with top experts in their field who have a passion for how to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of software.

Chris Skipper: Welcome to Environment Variables. Today, we've got another highlight from the recent Decarbonize Software 2023 event. We'll be showcasing the fireside chat on Responsible AI from Jesse McCrosky, Head of Sustainability and Social Change and Principal Data Scientist at ThoughtWorks, and Tammy McClellan, Senior Cloud Solution Architect at Microsoft and Co-Chair of the Community Working Group and Oversight Committee at the Green Software Foundation. They are introduced by our very own Senior Technical Project Manager for open source projects, Sophie Trinder, so it will be her voice that you hear first. So, without further ado, here's the Fireside Chat on Responsible AI.

Sophie Trinder: Hi everyone, I'm Sophie, the technical project manager for our open source projects at the Green Software Foundation. Today I'm going to introduce a special fireside chat to our Decarbonize Software event. We're continuing the conversation that began on the 5th of October at our panel on responsible AI. The conversation surrounding responsible AI is dynamic, oscillating between optimism and skepticism. one side, practitioners believe that AI has the potential to drive sustainable development goals, from responsible consumption to waste management and energy conservation. The promise lies in our improvements in measuring software's environmental impacts, and innovation across energy-efficient algorithms, hardware optimizations, and the growing use of renewable energy sources. On the other side, the rapid expansion of AI, particularly large learning language models, and the insatiable demand for this technology, are raising concerns. If left unchecked, the energy consumption and resource utilization associated with AI make many feel like we're endangering a future where software causes zero harmful environmental impacts. To help us explore the path forward, I'm thrilled to introduce Tammy McClellan, Senior Cloud Solution Architect at Microsoft, and Jesse McCrosky, Head of Responsible Tech and Principal Data Scientist at ThoughtWorks. Thanks, both. Take it away.

Tammy McClellan: Thanks, Sophie. And a hello to all you sustainability addicts. Jesse, hello. Let's start the question with, how do you see the relationship between responsible AI and sustainability?

Jesse McCrosky: Hey Tammy, great question and nice to see you all. So at ThoughtWorks we use a framework that I like which we refer to as the greening of tech and greening by tech and I think this is the best lens through which to view that question. Greening of tech refers to the fact that these systems and especially generative AI as we're talking about now have serious energy consumption, they have serious sustainability issues that need to be tackled.

The other side is greening by tech and recognizes the potential that this technology has to actually improve sustainability of other processes, either within or outside of the tech world. And I think what ties these, these two questions together is issues of transparency and information and ensuring that people have the information they need to make the right decisions for our environment.

Tammy McClellan: I like that, greening of tech and greening for tech. It's my new mantra now. So how can, uh, we use this to make more sustainable solutions?

Jesse McCrosky: So it's a big question. To begin with, I think that I refer to transparency, and when we talk about transparency, a lot of people think that means you share your source code, or you share your model weights, and then you're transparent. Or it means you have to explain the decisions the AI is making, and that's transparency. Transparency is more than that. There's a report I did with the Mozilla Foundation on AI transparency, and we talk about meaningful AI transparency that needs to be legible, auditable, and actionable. And this means that we have to consider the specific stakeholders that the information is being provided to, what are their needs, what are they going to do with this information. So it comes down to the old adage that you can't manage what you can't measure. So for example, in order to support meaningful policy, meaningful regulation, we need to have information about the sustainability characteristics of these systems.

Tammy McClellan: So talk to us a little bit about some possible solutions in this area.

Jesse McCrosky: Yeah, absolutely. So when we're looking at solutions, especially using the kind of transparency lens, we can think about who is the transparency being provided to. So, for example, we can talk about consumers. And right now, consumers are very excited about ChatGPT or whatever else, Stable Diffusion, DALL-E, and everything like that. It's a lot of fun to play with. And they ...

Chris Skipper hosts this episode of Environment Variables with guests Sophie Trinder and Adam Jackson to discuss the unveilings, questions, and highlights from the recent Decarbonize Software 2023 event. The GSF has announced its Impact Framework during the event that had taken place in November, and together with Chris, our guests discuss the realities of (and dreams for) the state of green software in this recap of Decarb 2023.

Learn more about our people:

• Chris Skipper: LinkedIn
• Adam Jackson: LinkedIn
• Sophie Trinder: LinkedIn

Find out more about the GSF:

• The Green Software Foundation Website 
• Sign up to the Green Software Foundation Newsletter

News:

• Driving Climate Change Solutions with AI | Decarbonize Software 2023 [07:13]
• High-quality energy data for emission optimizations | Decarbonize Software 2023 [11:54] 
• Impact Framework Demo | Decarbonize Software 2023 [14:57]
• Engineering Excellence with GSF Principles & Patterns | Decarbonize Software 2023 [18:27]
• Emissions Impossible: From home insights to a greener workplace | Decarbonize Software 2023 [30:55]

Events:

• UN World Environment Day: The Green Software Revolution (Virtual Event) - Monday June 5th [31:27]

Resources:

• Software Carbon Intensity (SCI) Specification | GSF [11:02]
• Impact Framework | GSF [12:48]
• Introducing the Impact Framework | Decarbonize Software 2023 [13:04]
• Green Software Practitioner [17:37]
• State of Green Software | GSF [21:02]
• Green Software Patterns | GSF [29:38]
• Opensource / Carbon Aware SDK | GSF[30:43]
• Dan Benitah's Projects and Posts [35:52]
• Decarbonize Software [38:19]

If you enjoyed this episode then please either:

• Follow, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts
• Follow and rate on Spotify
• Watch our videos on The Green Software Foundation YouTube Channel!
• Connect with us on Twitter, Github and LinkedIn!

TRANSCRIPT BELOW:

Sophie Trinder: We've also had some big tech companies adopting the Carbon Aware SDK, which has been great, including Microsoft and NTT Data to shift some of those high workloads, like training machine learning models to a different time in the day, potentially even a different location. So yeah, it was really great to see the Carbon Aware SDK being talked about at Decarb. 

Asim Hussain: Hello and welcome to Environment Variables, brought to you by the Green Software Foundation. In each episode we discuss the latest news and events surrounding green software. On our show you can expect candid conversations with top experts in their field who have a passion for how to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of software. I'm your host Asim Hussain.

Chris Skipper: Welcome to this episode of Environment Variables. I'm your host, Chris Skipper. And in this episode, we will be doing a recap of the recent Decarbonize Software 2023 event with the Green Software Foundation's Community Project Manager, Adam Jackson, and Sophie Trinder, Senior Technical Project Manager and Relative New Face at the GESF. Hello, Adam and Sophie, and welcome to Environment Variables.

Adam Jackson: Hi Chris, it's great to be back.

Sophie Trinder: Hi, Chris.

Chris Skipper: Great. So before we dive into the meat of this podcast, for our listeners who don't know you, could you please introduce yourself? And let's start with Adam, seeing as you are a well-seasoned veteran now of environment variables.

Adam Jackson: So I'm Adam Jackson, and I'm the Community and Tech Culture Lead at the Green Software Foundation. And once again, it's, I'm very excited to be here. I look after our community working group, and also many of our projects and programs, including our meetup program, Green Software Champions, and our recent Decarbonize Software event. Plus in 2024, I'll be leading the efforts on our Carbon Hack and our GSF Summit.

Chris Skipper: Great. Thank you. And Sophie?

Sophie Trinder: Yes. Hi, I'm Sophie Trinder. I'm the Senior Technical Project Manager at the Green Software Foundation. Excited to be here. Recently, I've been focusing on the tooling pillar of the Green Software Foundation's three pillar strategy, known as the Theory of Change. Alongside tooling, we also have knowledge and tech culture.

Like I say, I've been focusing on the tooling and driving forward the open source projects that sit under the umbrella of the open source working group. This includes tools for measurement, like our Impact Framework, and also tools for reduction, like our Carbon Aware SDK.

Chris Skipper: Awesome. Thank you, Sophie. And how long have you been in the GSF now? When did you join?

Sophie Trinder: Just over a month ago, 

Chris Skipper: Just over a month ago. Great. Great. Cool. So exciting things to come. And for those of you who don't know me, my name is Chris Skipper. You've probably heard my voice before on this podcast. I am the producer of Environment Variables. And recently I found out that Environment Variables is the top podcast for 55 amazing listeners on Spotify, thanks to Spotify Wrapped. Just a note that spotify is not the only platform that environment variables can be consumed on. And if you want to listen to it directly from the source, please go to podcast.greensoftware.foundation to listen there. Um, anyway, so, uh, I feel like I've, I've spoken enough about that before we dive int...

Chris Adams is joined by Ines Akrap from Cognizant to talk all-things sustainable web design. Together, they delve into the nuances of designing energy-efficient websites and the challenges of green coding in frontend development. Ines shares valuable insights from her experiences at the Linux Energy Foundation Summit and the SDIA Green Coding Summit. The episode also explores common mistakes in optimizing sites for carbon efficiency and discusses exciting projects in the field of green software that are generating buzz. Resources like Website Carbon, Ecograder, and Lighthouse are highlighted, alongside discussions on the Software Carbon Intensity Specification and the CarbonAware SDK. This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in the intersection of web development and sustainability, offering practical tips and exploring new research horizons in the quest to decarbonize the digital world.

Learn more about our people:

• Chris Adams: LinkedIn | GitHub | Website
• Ines Akrap: LinkedIn | Website

Find out more about the GSF:

• The Green Software Foundation Website 
• Sign up to the Green Software Foundation Newsletter

Topics:

• Designing Energy Efficient Websites | Linux Energy Foundation Summit Paris ‘23 [4:08]
• Green Coding in the Frontend: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly | SDIA Green Coding Summit ‘23 [16:15]
• SDIA 2023 Green Coding Workshop Slides | Chris Adams Green Web Foundation [23:41] 
• Mistakes when optimising sites for carbon [29:53]
• Which projects in this growing field have you excited right now? [41:53]

Resources:

• Website Carbon [10:01]
• Ecograder [10:01]
• Lighthouse [10:11]
• W3C Sustainable Web Design Group [12:19]
• Decarbonize Commerce 2023 | Green Software Foundation [18:56]
• Careful Trouble [19:57]
• How Thoughtworks uses Cloud Carbon Footprint for sustainability | Cameron Casher ThoughtWorks [20:32]
• Power profiling with the Firefox Profiler | Florian Quèze [21:34]
• Sitespeed [26:20]
• Software Carbon Intensity Specification | Green Software Foundation [26:46]
• DIMPACT [27:06]
• The Week in Green Software: New Research Horizons [27:10]
• Netcentric/progux: Progressive User Experience Library  [31:42]
• COP28 [36:16]
• Firefox Profiler [40:30] 
• Linux Perf | [40:56]
• CO2.js [42:12]
• The CarbonAware SDK | Green Software Foundation [43:31]
• Showcase — lowwwcarbon [45:22]
• Sustainablwebdeisgn.org [47:07]
• Green Software Practitioner Course | Green Software Foundation [48:13] 

If you enjoyed this episode then please either:

• Follow, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts
• Follow and rate on Spotify
• Watch our videos on The Green Software Foundation YouTube Channel!
• Connect with us on Twitter, Github and LinkedIn!

TRANSCRIPT BELOW:
Ines Akrap: You cannot fix something that you cannot measure because you just don't know that you have an issue. So being able to detect this issue and to show these numbers to the decision makers, I think this is something very important.

Chris Adams: Hello, and welcome to Environment Variables, brought to you by the Green Software Foundation. In each episode, we discuss the latest news and events surrounding green software. On our show, you can expect candid conversations with top experts in their field who have a passion for how to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of software.

I'm your host, Chris Adams.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of This Week in Green Software, where we bring you the latest news and updates from the world of sustainable software development. I'm your host, Chris Adams. In this episode, we're joined by Ines Akrap, a developer who I first met in Paris at the Linux Foundation Energy Summit earlier on this summer, and most recently with whom I shared a stage at the SDIA. The Sustainable Digital Infrastructure Alliance Green Coding Summit in Berlin earlier on this month in November. We ended up talking about digital sustainability for front end developers, and we had such a good time that we figured it might be worth continuing this conversation on the podcast for other people who are curious too.

Ines Akrap: Hi Chris. Thank you so much for having me here. I cannot stress enough how excited I am to be here since I'm listening to you so much that it just came out on my Spotify wrapped at the end of the year.

Chris Adams: Wow, I, thank you, I did not know about that. Okay, so, and for people who are new, or who weren't at either of these events and didn't see you speaking, I figured it might be worth just briefly giving you the floor to introduce yourself and talk about some of your background for this before we dive into some of the specifics about what we'll be talking about for the front end, so optimising for carbon at the front end.

So yeah, Ines, the floor is yours.

Ines Akrap: Sure. So hi everyone. My name is Ines. I'm a web performance engineer and sustainable web consultant and cognizant and centric. And yeah, I've been doing this for a few years now with many different...

In this episode of Environment Variables, we dive into a key highlight from Decarbonize Software 2023, featuring Asim Hussain's talk on the Green Software Foundation's newly introduced Impact Framework. This innovative framework aims to model, measure, simulate, and monitor the environmental impacts of software. Asim begins with an insightful overview of the framework's capabilities and objectives. Later, project leads Srinivasan Rakhunathan and Navveen Balani join the discussion to delve deeper into its applications and potential. This episode offers an essential understanding of how the Impact Framework is set to revolutionize the way we assess and mitigate the ecological footprint of software development and use.

Learn more about our people:

• Asim Hussain: LinkedIn / Twitter
• Navveen Balani: LinkedIn
• Srini Rakhunathan: LinkedIn 

Find out more about the GSF:

• The Green Software Foundation Website 
• Sign up to the Green Software Foundation Newsletter

The Impact Framework:

• https://if.greensoftware.foundation/ 

Events:

• Keep an eye out for the announcement about CARBON HACK ‘23 - coming soon!

If you enjoyed this episode then please either:

• Follow, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts
• Follow and rate on Spotify
• Watch our videos on The Green Software Foundation YouTube Channel!
• Connect with us on Twitter, Github and LinkedIn!

TRANSCRIPT BELOW:

Asim Hussain: Send us a manifest file so we can see not only how much is this thing going to cost us and how are you going to architect it, but what are the carbon emissions of your proposed approach? And let me compare versus the other people proposing approaches and not just compare on cost, but compare on carbon as well.

And I thought that was really, every time we talk to people about Impact Framework, people always come up with Another use case.

Hello and welcome to Environment Variables brought to you by the Green Software Foundation. In each episode we discuss the latest news and events surrounding green software. On our show you can expect candid conversations with top experts in their field who have a passion for how to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of software.

I'm your host Asim Hussain.

Chris Skipper: Hello and welcome to Environment Variables. Today we've got a highlight from the recent decarbonized software 2023 event. We'll be showcasing the talk from Asim Hussain about the recent Impact Framework, which is a framework to model, measure, simulate, and monitor the environmental impacts of software.

That has been introduced by the Green Software Foundation. To begin, Asim will do a brief overview of the framework and later on he will be joined by the project leads Srinivasan Rakhunathan and Navveen Balani. He is introduced by our fabulous director of communications and member relations, Namrata Narayan. So it'll be her voice that you hear first.

So without further ado, here's the introduction to the Impact Framework.

Namrata Narayan: It's the moment we've all been waiting for. Well, one of many. I'm delighted to introduce our chairperson and exec director, Asim Hassan, back to the stage. The GSF believes the most important step in greening software is measurement. An Impact Framework will enable us to measure software across environments and software types. But don't take my word for it. Asim, over to you for a full, brief, and exclusive look.

Asim Hussain: Thank you so much, Namrata. And I was really excited today to see several talks now focused on measurement from Siemens, we just heard from, and from Code University. We're all aligned, and we're all converging to the same point. 2024, I believe, will be the year of measurement. That doesn't surprise me, because when we first launched the foundation, We asked all of our members what their pain points were, and the overwhelming answer was measuring.

And we've been trying to explore all the different avenues of measuring over the last three years of the foundation's existence, and we've made lots of progress. And I mentioned earlier on, we, the stuff, the standards working group launched the software carbon intensity specification, which has reached ISO.

We're very excited about that. It should be in the catalog shortly. We've incubated, incubated various data projects because we knew data for measurement was a problem. And we've drove the creation of, of a number of case studies, software measurement case studies. But now we're in the next evolution to have software measurement be and mainstream activity.

For this to be an industry with thousands of professionals working to decarbonize software, for businesses to grow and thrive in a commercial software measurement ecosystem, we need to formalize software measurement into a discipline with standards and tooling. And we believe Impact Framework is the tooling and SCI is one of the standards.

Today I'm going to explain a little bit about Impact Framework now, then I'll give a demo. I spoke to some of our other co leads on Impact Framework about potential future use cases for the tool last week when I still had some hair. And we'll play that afterwards. So Impact Framework aims to make the environmental impacts of software easier to calculate and share.

Impact Framework allows you to calculate your application's environmental impacts, such as carbon, without writing any code. All you have to do is write a simple manifest file. Sometimes we call it an IMPL. And Impact Framework handles the rest. I want to be very clear. It's called Impact Framework, not Carbon Framework.

Some of the things I'm going to show you today is about measuring carbon, but our goal for the framework is to go beyond carbon, to start measuring all sorts of different environmental impacts. There are three concepts in Impact Framework. There's the manifest file, which contains either raw data or information about where to get the data from to do your measurements.

Then we have models. How do you get from that raw data to, let's say, carbon or water or some other impact? To do that, we need to use models, and we can chain models together to calculate your impacts. Just in a pipeline, just like a Unix pipeline. Then we have Impact Engine itself, which is the CLI tool, the command line ...