Environment Variables

On this episode of Environment Variables, Chris Adams is joined by fellow podcast host of the Green IO podcast Gaël Duez. Together they will cover the complexity of carbon accounting, new patents around carbon aware programming from Microsoft, and the flight of climate nerds from Twitter / X.com or whatever we’re calling it these days. Finally they share some exciting events from the world of Green Software including some upcoming events and we find out exactly why Gaël is a real-life bond villain!

Learn more about our people:

• Chris Adams: LinkedIn / GitHub / Website
• Gael Duez: LinkedIn / Website

Find out more about the GSF:

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

News:

• Exploring the complexity of Scope 3 emissions and the responsibility of the digital sector | Wholegrain Digital  [5:28]
• Introducing Digital Carbon Ratings | Sustainable Web Design [16:21]
• How $1.3 billion in new contracts led Hewlett Packard Enterprise to train salespeople in sustainability | GreenBiz [24:46]
• Elon Musk is killing ‘Environmental Twitter | The Verge [33:05]
• Cloud Native Sustainability Landscape | CNCF TAG Environmental Sustainability [40:28]
• Microsoft files patents for carbon capture and grid-aware workload scheduler | Datacenter Dynamics [40:46]

Events:

• Apidays London - Sustainability track (September 14th, London on site [43:10]
• CNCF Cloud Native Sustainability Week [44:10]
• Decarbonize Software 2023 - 16th of Nov (Online) | GSF [44:36]

Resources:

• Scoped Emissions as coffee | Chris Adams [8:55]
• Net Zero Initiative — 2020-2021 Report  [12:33]
• Ecograder by MightyBytes [19:01]
• Ecoindex.fr [19:11]
• HTTP Archive: State of the Web  [20:27]
• Sustainable Web Design [21:30]
• Call for consultation on the first specification for decarbonising use-phase emissions of connected devices | The Carbon Trust [22:01]
• Carbon Emissions in Browser DevTools - Firefox Profiler and CO2.js | The Green Web Foundation [22:24]
• Fairphone 5 sets a new standard with 8-10 years of Android support | Ars Technica [29:49]
• Commown - Cooperative for long-life electronics | Circular X [30:49]
• Mastodon.nl | Mastodon Green  [36:03]
• Climatejustice.social | Mastodon [36:25]
• Mastodon.energy [36:42]
• Bluesky [36:56]
• Ketan Joshi [37:19]
• Speakers Bureau | Green Software Foundation [39:59]   

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:

Gaël Duez: Financial accountants, they know for ages that one euro doesn't equal to one euro. If one euro is invested, or it's in your account ready to get used, or if you invest it in fees or in wages, it's not the same euro, and it's pretty much the same with CO2. And we tend to compensate everything. And you know, I love John Oliver's quote saying that we will not offset a way out of this climate crisis.

And this is exactly what is at stake here with this so called Scope 4, which is all about avoided emissions.

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 covering the complexity of carbon accounting, new patents around carbonware programming from Microsoft, the flight of climate nerds from Twitter or X.com or whatever we're calling it these days, and where we're finding our climate news instead. Finally, we'll be covering some exciting and interesting events from the world of green software coming up in the coming months. All right, before we dive in, though, let me introduce my guest and colleague for this episode of TWiGS.

With us today, we have Gaël Duez. Gaël, I'll hand over to you to introduce yourself. Thanks.

Gaël Duez: Hi, Chris. A pleasure to be here. Well, I'm Gaël Duez. I'm the founder of the Green IO Podcast, which aims to empower all responsible technologis...

Host Chris Adams is joined by executive director of the Green Software Foundation, Asim Hussain as they dive into another mailbag session, bringing you the unanswered questions from the recent live virtual event on World Environment Day that was hosted by the Green Software Foundation on June 5 2023. Asim and Chris start with a discussion on the complexities of capturing energy consumed by memory, I/O operations, and network calls in the SCI. They explore real examples of measuring SCI on pipelines of CI/CD, showcasing projects like Green Metrics Tool and the Google Summer of Code Wagtail project. The conversation shifts to the carbon efficiency of GPUs and their environmental impact, touching on the tech industry's increasing hardware demands. They also address the potential for reusing cooling water from data centers, considering various cooling designs and their impact on water consumption.

Learn more about our people:

• Chris Adams: LinkedIn / GitHub / Website
• Asim Hussain: LinkedIn / Twitter

Find out more about the GSF:

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

Questions:

• SCI is not capturing energy consumed by Memory , I/O operation, network calls etc. So what is your take on it? [3:27]
• Does the GSF have any real examples of measuring SCI on pipelines of CI/CD? [7:15]
• What is the carbon efficiency (or otherwise) of GPUs, say, onerous compute vector search? Is that good for the environment? [23:40]
• Can the cooling water for data centers be reused? [36:28]

Resources:

• Software Carbon Intensity Specification | Green Software Foundation [4:14]
• CO2.js | The Green Web Foundation [6:20]
• Wagtail CMS | wagtail.org [9:57] 
• Green Metrics Tool | Green Coding Berlin [11:09]
• Eco CI | Green Coding Berlin [11:56]
• Wagtail 5.1 gets a bit greener and leaner [16:06] 
• Kubernetes Power Manager | Intel -  Marlow Weston [19:47]
• Intel Power Optimization Library | Intel - Marlow Weston [20:59]
• Reducing the Carbon Impact of Generative AI Inference (today and in 2035) | Hot Carbon [27:53]
• Beyond ChatGPT: The Future of Generative AI for Enterprises | Gartner Report [35:01]  
• The AI startup outperforming Google Translate in Ethiopian languages | Lesan [35:36]
• With Google as My Neighbor, Will There Still Be Water? | AlgorithmWatch [42:30]
• The mounting human and environmental costs of generative AI | Sasha Luccione | Ars Technica [43:27] 
• Branch Magazine New Edition [43:51]
• Green Software Foundations Discussions on GitHub [44:50] 

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: We couldn't have done this two years ago. I feel like so many pieces of the puzzle are now coming into place, where people can really very easily, with an hour's worth of work, measure the emissions of a piece of software. Basically, the dream world I have is in six months time, thousands of open source repos all over the world just drop a configuration file into the root of their repo, add a GitHub action, and they're measuring an SCI score for their product.

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 a special Mailbag episode of Environment Variables. This is our second installment of the format, where we bring you some of the questions that came up during the recent virtual event hosted by the Green Software Foundation on World Environment Day back in June. If you missed our first episode from this mailbag format, feel free to jump back when you'll see some of the other questions that came up and some of our eloquent and possibly not quite so eloquent answers as we ran through that. Today, we're going to run through a few more questions. And as ever, I'm joined by Asim Hussain, Executive Director of the Green Software Foundation.

Hi, Asim!

Asim Hussain: Hi Chris, how are you doing?

Chris Adams: I'm not too bad. A bit grey outside over here in Berlin, but otherwise not too bad really. Okay, before we dive into this, the questions we'll run through. If you're new to environment variables, every time we record one of these, we show extensive show notes with all the links to the papers and the sources and the things that we do have.

So if any of this has piqued your interest, there will be a link that you can jump into to basically continue your nerding out about this particular subject. And I think that's pretty much it. But before that, actually, maybe we should introduce ourselves, actually. Asim, I've introduced you as the executive director, but I suspect you might want to say a bit more about the Green Software Foundation, what else you do when you're not working at the GSF?

<...

In this episode of TWiGS we delve into the intricate world of measuring software energy consumption, a topic vital for reducing our carbon footprint. Despite the strides in greening software, knowing how much energy software consumes remains a challenging puzzle, especially in the cloud computing era. Joining host Chris Adams are guests, Aditya Manglik and Hongyu Hè, graduate students from ETH Zurich in Switzerland. With their expertise in improving energy efficiency in systems, particularly operating systems, microarchitecture, and machine learning, we embark on a captivating journey to understand why quantifying software energy usage is intricate and what innovative solutions are emerging. Stay tuned as we amplify the geek factor to 11 and uncover the complexities of this critical field.

Learn more about our people:

• Chris Adams: LinkedIn / GitHub / Website
• Hongyu Hè: LinkedIn / Website
• Aditya Manglik: LinkedIn / Website

Find out more about the GSF:

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

Topics:

• Tracking Energy Consumption and Why it is Important [4:09]
• Tools for monitoring Linux energy consumption [19:49]
• How to monitor energy consumption in a virtual environment [24:06]
• Adrian Cockcroft’s Proposal for a Specification for Real Time Carbon Intensity | Green Software Foundation [30:12]
• Monitoring the energy consumption of data centers [33:34]

Resources:

• EnergAt: Fine-Grained Energy Attribution for Multi-Tenancy | Hongyu Hè HotCarbon [3:18]
• Measuring Carbon Footprint of Personal Computing | Aditya Manglik LFE Summit [3:29]
• Measuring Your Application Power and Carbon Impact (Part 1) - Sustainable Software | Scott Chamberlin [5:09] 
• PowerTOP | Linux [20:24] 
• Scaphandre | GitHub [20:57]
• Cobbler | GitHub [24:48] 
• EnergAt | GitHub [41:40]

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:
Aditya Manglik: At the end of the day, what we want to tell people is, okay, computing is great, but we have to be sustainable. And right now, data centers consume 3% of all global electricity. This number is only going to grow, right? Especially after COVID, we have had a massive increase in Digitalization, and now with the large language models coming in, like ChatGPT, it's going to grow exponentially.

So we have to be sustainable, and the first step to being sustainable about energy use is to understand where is the energy going.

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. Welcome back to The Week in Green Software on Environment Variables, where we bring you the latest news and updates from the world of sustainable software development. I'm your host, Chris Adams. When we talk about greening software, a lot of the time we talk about how much energy we use, because even in 2023, more than half of the electricity we use globally is still generated by burning fossil fuels. And we've spoken before in other episodes about how you can make the electricity you use greener, but sometimes you just need to be able to use less electricity in the first place. And to do that, it helps to know how much energy software is using in the first place. This sounds simple, right? In a world of cloud computing, this turns out to be surprisingly hard, and today we're turning up the geek factor all the way to 11 to figure out why this is hard and what the state of the art looks like. Helping with this journey today, we have two special guests from ETH Zurich in Switzerland, whose work we featured in earlier episodes, and we'll see how far we can get in the time we have today. So with us today, we have Aditya. Hey Aditya!

Aditya Manglik: Hi Chris, please feel free to call me Adi. It's a pleasure to be here on this podcast. And, yeah, I'm a longtime listener of this podcast, so it's very exciting to be here. I'm a graduate student at ETH, where I work on improving the energy efficiency of systems, especially operating systems and microarchitecture.

And I previously worked on building a very nice, very complex energy attribution system in Linux as a Google Summer of Code student with the GNOME Foundation.

Chris Adams: Cool. Thank you, Adi. And in addition, we have Hongyu also. Hongyu, I'll give the floor for you to introduce yourself as well.

Hongyu Hè : Yeah, thanks. Thanks very much for having me on, Chris. And thanks for inviting me, Adi. So yeah, I'm also a graduate student in computer science at ETH. My research includes both software and hardware. And I'm currently interning at Apple, working on machine learning research.

Chris Adams: Cool. Thank you Hongyu. So for those who are interested, we featured both of, uh, the work from both of these two researchers. In the last episode, we spoke a little bit about Hongyu's, uh, uh, paper, uh, what one of the papers Hongyu was a contributor on at the Hot Carbon Conference. And we'll share a link to the talk presented there.

And we've also shared a link to Adi's talk at the Linux Foundation Energy Summit in Paris earlier on in June. If you're new to this episode, to this podcast, my name is Chris, I'm the Executive Director of the Green Web Foundation, and I'm the Chair of the Policy Working Group at the Green Software Foundation, and as a final reminder, we're going to cover a fair few papers and links and resources, and what we'll do is we'll add a...

Host Chris Adams is joined by Niki Manoledaki of Grafana and Ross Fairbanks of Flatpeak in this edition of TWiGS focused on Carbon Aware Spatial Shifting. They dive into Amazon's 2022 Sustainability Report, highlighting 19 AWS regions powered by 100% renewable energy, and explore videos from the Linux Foundation energy summit (links below). They also discover the importance of measuring carbon footprints in personal computing and IT, and learn about Kepler Power Estimation and the PLATYPUS Attack. Plus, they share some exciting upcoming events from the CNCF and some interesting Barbenheimer inspired portmanteaus from the world of Green Software!

Learn more about our people:

• Chris Adams: LinkedIn / GitHub / Website
• Ross Fairbanks: LinkedIn / Website
• Niki Manoledaki: LinkedIn / Website

Find out more about the GSF:

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

News:

• Amazon 2022 Sustainability Report — 19 AWS Regions are 100% renewable | Adrian Cockcroft [4:38]
• Videos are out from the Linux Foundation energy summit - a selection [9:12]
• HTTP Response Header Field: Carbon-Emissions-Scope-2 | IETF [21:28] 

Resources:

• Boavizta Project | GitHub [6:44]
• Data insight: Heavy industry gains ground in Europe's corporate renewable PPA market | Energymonitor.ai 8:00] 
• Measuring Carbon Footprint of Personal Computing | Aditya Manglik LFE Summit [9:30]
• Measuring IT Carbon Footprint: What is the Current Status Actually? | Tom Kennes [11:18]
• Kepler Power Estimation [17:47]
• PLATYPUS Attack [20:12]  
• Utilization is Virtually Useless as a Metric! | Adrian Cockcfoft [20:56]    
• Reducing data center energy usage with Grafana: A green IT success story | Bertrand Martin, GrafanaCon 2023 [22:21]
• Optimizing Full-Stack Sustainability in a Real World Data...- Chen Wang, Hua Ye & Fan Jing Meng | GrafanaCon 2023 [23:15]
• HotCarbon’23: Bringing Carbon Awareness to Multi-cloud Application Delivery | Dityaroop Maji [28:10]
• Join Cloud Native Computing Foundation on Slack [37:01]
• Climate Action Tech [37:31] 

Events:

• CNCF Global Week of Cloud Native Sustainability October 2023
• New Working Group in the TAG: Green Reviews August 2nd 2023

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:
Niki Manoledaki: When you have that kind of data at your disposal that you didn't previously have, it can really tell a story that you can show to someone else and say, Hey, look at this dashboard that you just see how the energy consumption and temperature and CPU usage correlate with each other. And I think it's fascinating, and I hope we see more of these visualizations.

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 back to the Week in Green Software on Environment Variables, where we bring you the latest news and updates from the world of sustainable software development. I'm your host, Chris Adams. Today, we're diving into Amazon's 2022 sustainability report. And we'll be exploring Carbon Aware Spatial Shifting with Karmada, Kubernetes, and a new real time carbon footprint standard.

And we'll also be covering a few future events with Green Software. But before we dive in, let me introduce my guests for this episode of This Week in Green Software. With us today, we have Niki Manolodaki. Hi, Niki.

Niki Manoledaki: Hi, it's so nice to be on this podcast. I'm a long time listener, so I'm very excited to be here.

Chris Adams: And we also have Ross Fairbanks. Hey, Ross.

Ross Fairbanks: Hi everyone, I'm also another long term listener, so yeah, excited to be here.

Chris Adams: Cool. All right, before we start, I guess maybe we should do a quick round of introductions for what we do and what we work on, and then we'll just get right into the format of running through some of the news stories that caught our eyes and sharing a few kind of lukewarm to hot takes, depending on how we're feeling.

Okay, Niki, are you okay with me just handing over to you first?

Niki Manoledaki: Yep, so hi, I'm a software engineer at Grafana Labs and I'm working on also the back end of Grafana itself. I was previously at Weaver. It's where I did work on EKSCTL, t...

In this episode of Environment Variables Chris Adams is joined by Fershad Irani, an independent web sustainability consultant and maintainer of CO2.js. They discuss topics like open data on the greenness of power, the wonders of HotCarbon, new projects from the cloud native computing foundation and the Green Software Foundation, and gzip.ai. Fershad shares his experiences working with the Green Web Foundation and the growth of the open-source carbon estimation library, CO2.js and there’s a cameo from Fershad’s cat!

Learn more about our people:

• Chris Adams: LinkedIn / GitHub / Website
• Fershad Irani: LinkedIn / Website

Find out more about the GSF:

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

News:

• Electricity Maps Open Data [4:02]
• HotCarbon 2023: 2nd Workshop on Sustainable Computer Systems | HotCarbon [9:27] 
• Articles by Assaad Razzouk | Thought Leader Renewable Energy | Angry Clean Energy Guy [17:51] 
• Quinbrook pops up in Grok’s camp at Sun Cable, deal close | Financial Review [19:05] 
• Adrian Cockcroft’s Proposal for a Specification for Real Time Carbon Intensity | Green Software Foundation [20:55]
• Data centres & networks | IEA [25:14]
• Graduated and Incubating Projects | Green Reviews Project | Cloud Native Computing Foundation [28:36]

Announcements:

• The Green Software Foundation is Hiring [30:45]

Resources:

• Observable [6:10] 
• The Internet of Tomorrow Must Sleep More and Grow Old | Romain Jacob [10:10]
• Green Networks | Environment Variables episode with Romain Jacob [11:12] 
• OVH weathermap [12:21] 

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:

Fershad Irani: Pardon the pun, but this turns the heat up on those or has the potential to turn the heat up on those big cloud providers and gives people a chance to, like you say, compare them on their carbon footprint, they might even need to start competing on carbon footprint because that's going to be important in the future.

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 The 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 today's episode, we're looking at open data about how green the power we use is, the wonders of HotCarbon, some cool new projects from the cloud native computing foundation and the Green Software Foundation, and a really cool technology called gzip.ai. Finally, we have some fantastic opportunities for you to be part of the Green Software Foundation because they're hiring. But before we dive in, let me introduce my guest today, Fershad Irani, an independent web sustainability consultant and maintainer of CO2. js. Fershad, I'll hand over to you to introduce yourself, if that's okay.

Fershad Irani: Cheers, Chris. Thanks, man. I know you've been trying to get me on this podcast for a while, so it's exciting to be finally here. Yeah. Hi folks. As Chris mentioned, my name is Fershad Irani. I'm a web sustainability consultant and I live in Taipei, Taiwan. Most of the time I spend these days is working with Chris and a bunch of other amazing people at the Green Web Foundation.

I think I've been over... It's over a year now, hasn't it, since I've been there, Chris? Or close to.

Chris Adams: I think it has been indeed. Yeah.

Fershad Irani: Yeah, during that time, we've, we've done a heck of a lot, I think, um, doing a bit of writing and a bit of coding. Chris did mention co2.js, which is where I've spent a big chunk of the last year. It's an open source carbon estimation library.

I think Chris has mentioned it once or twice on this podcast, just snuck it in there. It's been really cool watching that project grow over the year and now it's being picked up by some other quite large projects itself, such as the Mozilla Firefox browser and web page test, which is just mind blowing to think that some code I've written is in those projects.

But outside of web sustainability, I do have a bit of a life. I help organize and play in a local touch rugby, or touch football for all the Aussies out there. We have a group here in Taiwan and we play weekly and try and send teams internationally whenever we can.

Chris Adams: Cool. Thanks. Thanks, Fish. Oh, and I'm calling just for context when we work together, Fershad said Chris, you can call me Fish instead of Fershad. So if I call Fershad Fish at any point, it's, it's basically just, uh, a, a shortened version of the, of his name that he's comfortable with us using. All right.

So that's who I'm referring to when I ask. What do you think, Fish? I do not have any actual Fish in, uh, the podcast today.

Fershad Irani: Cat's out of the bag.

Chris Adams: Yeah. Yeah. Actually, is the cat also in the room as well? Like we, we gonna have a incursion from her today.

Fershad Irani:<...

This episode of The Week in Green Software, features guest Stani Borisová; Expert in Life Cycle Management at IVL and former researcher at RISE Sweden. Host Chris quizzes her on her expertise in data center LCA and they discuss interesting news tidbits to share from a global tour of Singapore, Norway, Germany, and America. They discuss how data centers might be unnecessarily using too much heat to cool themselves down, how Germany’s Energy Efficiency Act has perhaps not gone far enough and how Norway’s investment into oil and gas affects renewable energy resources for data centers. Finally we have some fantastic opportunities for you to be part of the Green Software Foundation!

Learn more about our people:

• Chris Adams: LinkedIn / GitHub / Website
• Stanislava Borisová: LinkedIn 

Find out more about the GSF:

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

News:

• "Continue AI development – for the sake of the environment" | Journal of Extracts (extrakt.se) [9:49]
• IMDA Launches Sustainability Standard for Tropical Climate Data Centres | Data Center Storage ASEAN [15:14]
• Germany to pass Energy Efficiency Act, demanding heat reuse in data centers | Data Centre Dynamics [19:01]
• Government Norway approves 15 Billion Euro Investment in Oil and Gas Industry | Datacenter Forum [23:02]
• Fairphone 4—the repairable, sustainable smartphone—is coming to the US | Ars Technica [28:11]

Announcements:

• The Green Software Foundation is Hiring [39:31]

Resources:

• Open-source solutions are essential to greening software and ICT | SOGS Report [5:39]
• Carbon Aware SDK | Green Software Foundation [7:27]
• Digital does not equal green | SOGS Report  [7:45]
• Decarbonization alone cannot make software green  | SOGS Report [8:47]
• Climate Policy Radar  [13:48]
• Global Stocktake Explorer [14:35]
• The Week in Green Software: Code Green and Clean Power | Nina Jabłońska | Environment Variables Podcast [22:40]
• Green Rocks Newsletter [27:27]
• Mining.com [27:27] 
• Techbuyer [36:22]
• Optimizing Server Refresh Cycles: The Case for Circular Economy With an Aging Moore's Law | Rabih Bashroush, Nour Rteil, Rich Kenny, Astrid Wynne [37:12]
• Regenerate! Board Game [40:16]

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:
Stani Borisová: We talk a lot about CO2 and climate change, and it's very important, but at the same time, there are other aspects of the world, such as, let's say, the water ecosystems or the depletion of minerals and such, and they happen at the same time as climate change happens, so they're inseparable.

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.

Welcome to another episode of The 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 today's episode, we have some interesting news tidbits from a global tour of Singapore, Norway, Germany, and America.

Then finally, we have some fantastic opportunities available if you fancy working with the Green Software Foundation, because yes, they're hiring. But before we dive into this, let me introduce my guest today. Today we have Stani Borisová from IVL, Swedish Environmental Research Institute. Stani, I'm gonna let you introduce yourself here.

So yeah, the floor is yours and maybe that's if I've mispronounced your name. Please do tell, please do help correct me because I am not sure if I've got it correct.

Stani Borisová: Hi, Chris. Thanks for having me here today. So you've pronounced my name very nicely and properly. Uh, and I work as a consultant in Swedish Environmental Institute, as you've mentioned, specifically in the area of LCA or life cycle assessment. I also do life cycle assessment of data centers. And recently I've also been involved in the development of PCR.

Uh, which stands for, um, product category rules, or basically a template for a standardized life cycle assessment of electronics. And among other projects, also a heat reuse about mealworm farming from data center excess heat, or an EU project on waste reuse in process industry. It's great to be here.

Chris Adams: Cool, thank you. So before we dive into the meat of the show, if you, if this is the first time you ever listen to this podcast, we will share all the links that we, for every article that we discuss and anything else that comes up that's interesting, we'll do our best to share the links to this as well.

Okay, so, Stani, you said a couple of ...

On this episode of Environment Variables, host Chris Adams is joined by Asim Hussain as they dive into a mailbag session, bringing you the most burning unanswered questions from the recent live virtual event on World Environment Day that was hosted by the Green Software Foundation on June 5 2023. Asim and Chris will tackle your questions on the environmental impact of AI computation, the challenges of location shifting, the importance of low-carbon modes, and how to shift the tech mindset from "more is more" (Jevons Paradox). Chock-full of stories about projects implementing green software practices, and valuable resources, listen now to have your thirst for curiosity quenched!

Learn more about our people:

• Chris Adams: LinkedIn / GitHub / Website
• Asim Hussain: LinkedIn / Twitter

Find out more about the GSF:

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

Questions in the show:

• What computation is needed for AI, the explosive use, and what impact will that have on the environment? [7:17]
•  Regarding location shifting - is the foundation concerned that when everyone time shifts to the same location or the same greener grids, that can increase the demand of those grid's energy, which could increase fossil fuel burning to meet said new demand? [18:50]
• Why not just run low-carbon mode all the time, not just when the carbon intensity is high on “dirty electricity”? [34:35]
• Given the Jevons’ Paradox, how do we change the thought pattern that more is more in tech? [38:15]
• Are there any notable examples of organizations or projects that have successfully implemented green software practices? What can we learn from them? [49:00]

Resources:

• Peeling The Onion’s Layers - Large Language Models Search Architecture And Cost | Semi Analysis [8:51]
• Simon Willison: LLMs on personal devices | [12:40]
• 2023: These Are the World’s 12 Largest Hyperscalers | Data Center Knowledge [13:13]  
• Energy Market Trends at the Layer Below the Internet Stack | Chris Adams [20:55] 
• Carbon Intensity API | Carbonintensity.org.uk [25:05] 
• Don’t follow the sun: Scheduling compute workloads to chase green energy can be counter-productive | Adrian Cockcroft [27:15]
• Ecovisor: A Virtual Energy System for Carbon-Efficient Applications  | Abel Souza, Noman Bashir [30:06]
• Branch Magazine | climateaction.tech [35:08]
• Green software requires a holistic approach | State of Green Software Report [38:46]  
• ICT industry to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 45 per cent by 2030 | International Telecommunication Union (ITU) [45:35]
• Windows Update is now carbon aware | Microsoft [49:24]
• Xbox Is Now the First Carbon Aware Console, Update Rolling Out to Everyone Soon | Microsoft Xbox [49:37]
• Sentry plugin for Grafana | Sentry Computing [51:55]
• Storj [52:58]   

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: We're talking about a cultural change that will take generations is I think what it would really take. I don't think this is gonna happen in our lifetimes. I think the world that you've described is a beautiful world. I hope to, I hope my dream it will exist, and I think it'll only exist if the culture changes and the culture changes worldwide and dramatically.

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. 

Welcome to a special mailbag episode of Environment Variables. We're thrilled to bring you the most anticipated questions that arose during a recent live virtual event hosted by the Green Software Foundation on World Environment Day on the 5th of June with over 200 passionate practitioners participating from all around the world, the event featured an expert panel consisting of influential voices in the green software movement.

Our panelists at the time included Asim Hussain, who's here today. Hey, Asim.

Asim Hussain: Heya.

Chris Adams: We also had Anne Currie, the Greentech advocate at Container Solutions and Community Chair at the GSF. We also had Tamara Kneese, the UX research leader and strategist and lead researcher of the State of Green Software Report, as well as Pindy Bhullar, the ESG Chief Tech Technology Officer at the bank, UBS and the PhD in her own right. During the event, they introduced the Green Software Foundation, and unveiled all kinds of insights from the recently published state of Green software report, which sparked all kinds of engaging discussions. But we didn't really have enough time to cover all the questions that were coming in from the people who are asking there.

So you can think of today as a bit of a kind of roundup of some of the questions that see...

Join us for a special episode of Environment Variables as we celebrate over a year of bringing you the best insights on Green Software! From open source's role in reducing software emissions to making green changes in organizations, carbon-aware computing, and more, we revisit the most captivating moments from our top 10 most popular episodes. Listen to snippets from our discussions with industry experts and dive into the world of Green Software, as we reflect on our journey, share valuable knowledge from our guests and hosts, and continue to raise awareness about the importance of Green Software. 

Find out more about the GSF:

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

Episodes:

• How can Open Source Help Reduce Software Emissions? | Ep 4 [1:40]
• How do we make Green Changes in Organisations? | Ep 3
• The Week in Green Software: Green Software Legislation | Ep 15
• The Week in Green Software: Calculating Software Emissions with Navveen Balani & Srini Rakhunathan | Ep 20 
• Carbon Aware Computing | Ep 2 
• Fact Check: Sara Bergman & Software Carbon Intensity | Ep 13 
• Amazon's Customer Carbon Footprint Tool | Ep 1
• From Carbon Aware to Carbon Intelligent | Ep 9 
• Green Networks | Ep 10 
• Community Clouds and Energy Islands with Dawn Nafus and Laura Watts | Ep 14

Resources:

• Building Green Software Book Pre-Release | Anne Currie, Sara Hsu & Sara Bergman. 
• State of Green Software Survey Report | GSF

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:
Chris Skipper: Hello and welcome to this special episode of Environment Variables. For those of you who don't know, it's been just over year since the Environment Variables podcast was released, and we thought we would take a look back at the best moments over our first year. This podcast started off as an idea from Asim Hussain.

The director of the Green Software Foundation and has blossomed into a beacon for green software awareness on the internet. Now, just as a disclaimer, you may not have heard my voice before. I am Chris Skipper, and I am the producer of Environment Variables. I don't often get in front of the microphone and would say, I started this journey not knowing a lot about software or its effect on the environment.

However, I now have accumulated this assumed knowledge or full knowledge of a lot of the facts and terminology that surround green software, which has benefited my day-to-day life in the way that I use computers and the internet as a quote unquote layperson. It has also made me a great addition to any pub quiz team, but that's enough about me.

In this episode, we will be looking at the moments of our top 10 most popular episodes of Environment Variables, which started in April of 2022. This is purely based on listener stats, so we thought it would be nice to revisit some of these tidbits For your listening pleasure, as always, links to each of the episodes will be down in the show notes below, or if you want to listen to all of the episodes of Environment Variables.

You can as always visit https://podcast.greensoftware.foundation, preferably after this episode. So to kick us off, our first moment we're going to look at was from an episode entitled, How Can Open Source Help Reduce Software Emissions? Where Asim was joined by Chris Lloyd-Jones, affectionately known as CLJ, or sealjay as is his Twitter handle.

Head of open technologies at Avenade and co-chair of the open source working group at the Green Software Foundation. And Dan Lewis-Toakley Green Cloud Lead at ThoughtWorks and the other co-chair of the open source working group at the Green Software Foundation. Now, in this episode, they discussed the benefits of open source versus closed source, what opensource tools are out there, and how they can help reduce software emissions.

This was the fourth episode of Environment Variables, and the quote here features both of our guests. But with a particular tone of impending doom from CLJ himself.

Dan Lewis-Toakley: It's about engaging the community and growing adoption of this tool and similar tools rather than necessarily holding it tight to our chest and trying to have the secret source that, you know, that we want to provide to our clients or to partners.

So that was a, that's sort of a, a key aspect. Different license types, more restrictive ones can often be a deal breaker for some companies and organizations. To adopt software.

Chris Lloyd-Jones: Yeah. I dunno about you, but sometimes it can also feel like, you know, when you've got a toddler or a child is holding a suite and you have to kind of pry their fingers off it at times for an organization, it can be quite hard to make that decision.

And I say that because we, we've contributed some code as Avenade, the Green Software Foundation, to start that CICD pipeline tooling. But one of the reasons why I push for that is because I also think if you keep that secret source close to your heart, you run the risk of people, first of all, jumping over you because they just want to get things done.

They want to get things done quickly. What you do becoming out of date and stale, then you've invested a whole load of time in something which isn't compatible with what people are now using. You can also just look like a, a bad actor, particularly in fi...

In this episode of Environment Variables, we cover the State of Green Software Report with the Green Software Foundation’s very own lead researcher Tamara Kneese. She and host Chris Adams delve into the insights from the report including key topics such as the carbon footprint of crypto mining, regulations for generative AI, and the role of consulting firms in shaping emerging technologies. They also discuss how the results highlighted the impact of the tech industry, AI sustainability, and the need for responsible innovation. To find out just how interesting the results of the survey have been and everything in between tune in now!

Learn more about our people:

• Chris Adams: LinkedIn / GitHub / Website
• Tamara Kneese: LinkedIn / Website

Find out more about the GSF:

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

Key Talking Points:

• State of Green Software Survey Report | GSF [3:28]
• Measuring carbon emissions is crucial for scaling sustainable AI | SOGS Survey Report [15:15]
• Web3 rings alarm for green software practitioners | SOGS Survey Report [23:13]
• Software legislation has quadrupled in the last decade  | SOGS Survey Report [32:32]
• New Green Software Developments in the US | Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights | OSTP | The White House [37:15]

Resources:

• Responsible AI is green AI | SOGS Survey Report [13:43] 
• Decarbonization alone cannot make software green | SOGS Survey Report [13:43]
• Trustworthy and Responsible AI | National Institute for Standards and Technology [37:58]
• Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox | Yale Law Journal [38:54]
• Amazon workers press company on climate change response after Pakistan floods | NBC [39:05] 

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:
Tamara Kneese: I think there's much more of a sense of urgency from policymakers, from advocates, from activists, from researchers, scientists who are looking at the numbers and looking at the data and thinking, we really need to do something now. And I think it's all part of the same general wave of really trying to find a way to live with tech in a way that is more sustainable, in a holistic sense, in a way that is actually good for people and for the planet.

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, the podcast where we explore the world of sustainable software development. I'm your host, Chris Adams, and today we have a fascinating conversation lined up for you. Joining us today is Tamara Kneese, the lead researcher at the Green Software Foundation.

And today we'll be diving deep into her involvement in the groundbreaking state of green software report and at the Green Software survey for 2023. This survey aims to shed light on the current landscape of green software and the challenges and opportunities it presents. In this episode, we'll explore tomorrow's role in designing the survey, her research findings, and the implications for the future of sustainable software development.

We'll dive into the various insights provided by the survey that includes in identification of specialist green software tools, the progress made in decarbonizing software, and the potential of software to contribute to renewable energy infrastructure. So whether you're a software developer or an environmental enthusiast, or simply curious about the role of technology in shaping our planet's future, this episode is for you.

So that's me being talking for a while. Let's welcome Tamara Kneese to Environment Variables. Tamara, the floor is yours. Please introduce yourself.

Tamara Kneese: Thank you, Chris. So I'm Tamara Kneese and I'm the lead researcher at the Green Software Foundation. Very excited to be here with you. I'm an academic with a background in media studies, science and technology studies and gender studies. And now I'm about to start a new role as the project director of Data and Society's newly launched Algorithmic Impact Methods Lab.

Chris Adams: Wow. Congrats. That's a new development. This is how I spoke and that's, oh, I'm really glad to hear that actually.

Tamara Kneese: Thank you.

Chris Adams: Cool. You're welcome. Yeah. Okay. So if you have not listened to this podcast before, my name is Chris Adams. I am the executive director at the Green Web Foundation, and I work at the Green Software Foundation as the co-chair of the policy working group, which is where I met Tamara, and where we end up seeing each other on a more or less biweekly net basis. All right. Thank you for introducing yourself, Tamara. Before we dive into the State of Green software survey, I just wanna check anything we talk about will do our best to share links in the show notes like we do on a regular basis. And I think with that, we should probably go get into it, shall we Tamara?

Tamara Kneese: Yeah.

Chris Adams: All right. Okay, so t...

Joining host Chris Adams on this episode of TWiGS is Nina Jabłońska, operations coordinator at Energy Tag and a master's student in sustainable energy systems. In this episode, we'll explore insights from the Linux Foundation Energy Summit in Paris, including Microsoft's urgent call for green coding and real-life examples of reducing computing emissions through cloud carbon footprint analysis. We'll also touch on employee activism at AWS, where tech workers stood up for climate action and better work-from-home conditions. Nina also tells us why sometimes she goes by Nina Jab%o%ska, and why Cara Delevingne and Keanu Reeves are the ultimate “carbon-free couple!”

Learn more about our people:

• Chris Adams: LinkedIn / GitHub / Website
• Nina Jabłońska: LinkedIn

Find out more about the GSF:

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

News:

• Carbon-aware software is central to decarbonization | State of Green Software Survey | The Green Software Foundation [3:01]
• Reducing cloud emissions by 60% | ThoughtWorks [24:26]
• Microsoft Issues Code Green Alert | Analytics India Mag [27:09]
• Corporate Amazon workers protest company’s climate impact and return-to-office mandate in walkout | AP News [34:43] 

Resources:

• Green Software Principles and Embedding Carbon Awareness in Your Applications | Dan Benitah & Szymon Duchniewicz, Avanade | LF Energy Summit [4:12]
• Technical Research Fueling NextGen Actions | Hallie Cramer & Ana Radovanovic, Google; Iegor Riepin, Technical University of Berlin; Gailin Pease, Singularity Energy | PyPSA | LF Energy Summit [8:55]
• GitHub - PyPSA/247-cfe: Explore the impacts of 24/7 Carbon-Free Energy PPAs [8:55] 
• The politics of data centers | The Green Web Foundation [19:27] 
• Cara Delevingne sprays industrial wastewater on her face in her latest beauty campaign | Vattenfall [38:20]
• Sad Keanu | Know Your Meme [40:07] 

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:
Nina Jablonska: So it's just a matter of really wrapping your head around how you want to do it and what concrete actions you want to you want to undertake. But in the end, I think it just pays off to be green, and I hope it will only go in this direction.

Chris Adams: Hello, and welcome to Environment Variables, brought to you by the Green Software Foundation. In each episode, we discussed 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 have some insights from the recent Linux Foundation Energy Summit in Paris, Microsoft issuing a code red for green coding, concrete examples of using cloud carbon footprint to reduce computing emissions. Before we dive in though, let me introduce my guest today for this episode of this Week in Green Software. Today we have Nina Jabłońska of Energy Tag. Nina, I'll hand over the floor to you to introduce yourself and say what you do.

Go for it.

Nina Jablonska: Hello. So I'm Nina Jabłońska. Nice to hear you Chris again. So I am the operations coordinator at Energy Tag. Super happy to be here. So privately, apart from working at Energy Tag, which is a nonprofit organization, I am also actually finalizing my master's studies in sustainable energy systems, which is why I am currently placed in Stockholm.

And recently I have actually taken up Spanish classes, which makes a lot of sense

Chris Adams: Wow, bueno!

Nina Jablonska: Yeah, my, my masters, the first year I spent actually in Barcelona and I started learning. A bit of Spanish just to be able to do my groceries, and since I found that in Stockholm, everybody speaks English.

So I figured I would just continue this journey of learning a third language online with, with a, um, with a teacher. But it's pretty exciting, a very nice thing to, to do some extra brain exercising in a bit different way than studying and working.

Chris Adams: Cool. All right. Thank you for that, Nina, and I should probably introduce myself as well. My name is Chris Adams. I am the the co-chair of the Policy working group in the Green Software Foundation, and I'm also the executive director at the Green Web Foundation, another nonprofit working towards an entirely fossil free internet by 2030.

If you are new to this show, the format is as follows. We basically have some people come onto the show. We look at some stories in the news that caught arise, and we just talk about them and share some notes and reckons basically. That's largely it, and we have a few stories ahead of us that I've foreshadowed already.

We're gonna start with the first story we have here, a one from the green software report. So what I've been doing for the last few weeks is I've been inviting guests to pick an insight that caught their eye. And Nina, you are no different today. I'm gonna give you an idea of anything that you, that caught your eye when you're looking at this, and it may or may not be related to what you do at work.

So yeah, I'l...