Environment Variables

This Week in Green Software, hosts Carlos and Adi cover the latest developments in green software, including new insights into measuring and reducing the energy impact of digital systems. They explore research challenging common assumptions about efficiency, highlight practical tools for tracking software emissions, and discuss ongoing challenges in standardizing measurement. They also broaden the conversation around digital sustainability, emphasizing that it extends beyond carbon to include social and economic factors.

Learn more about our people:

• Aditya Manglik: LinkedIn | GitHub | Website
• Carlos Pignatoro: LinkedIn | GitHub | Website

Find out more about the GSF:

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

News:

• The SCI Standard: Providing the Software Emissions Data CSRD Needs | GSF [03:35]
• Green Prompting: Characterizing Prompt-driven Energy Costs of LLM Inference | Adamska et al. [13:19]
• GitHub - LLM Energy Lab | Adora Foundation [20:25]
• YouTube - I Can’t Sell You Laptops Anymore [30:43]

Events:

• Sustainable AI for Climate Tech Founders (April 22 at 1:00 pm PDT - San Francisco) [37:55]
• Sustainable AI (April 23 at 6:00 pm CEST - Utrecht) [38:10]

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!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Host Kate Goldenring is joined by Chris Adams to explore how the Software Carbon Intensity (SCI) standard can help companies meet new EU sustainability reporting requirements, shifting green software from best practice to audited obligation. They also discuss research on “green prompting,” showing that specific words can significantly impact AI energy use, along with new tools that reveal real-time energy consumption in AI workflows. They close by examining how rising AI demand is increasing hardware costs and disrupting the refurbished laptop market.

Learn more about our people:

• Chris Adams: LinkedIn | GitHub | Website
• Kate Goldenring: LinkedIn | Website

Find out more about the GSF:

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

News:

• The SCI Standard: Providing the Software Emissions Data CSRD Needs | GSF [02:47]
• Green Prompting: Characterizing Prompt-driven Energy Costs of LLM Inference | Adamska et al. [29:40]
• I Can’t Sell You Laptops Anymore [44:30] 

Resources:

• Green Metrics Tool | green-coding.io [19:25] 
• Cardamon [19:48]
• Briefing 1 - XBRL and materiality briefing video | Chris Adams [21:18] 
• Deck 1 - XBRL and materiality 
• carbon.txt - Green Web Foundation [25:48]
• A validator for carbon.txt files, and linked documents in them · GitHub [26:51]
• Introducing our new work on carbon.txt - Green Web Foundation 
• GitHub - ml-energy/zeus: Measure and optimize the energy consumption of your AI applications! 
• We know AI can use loads of energy. So why isn't it visible at the point of use when you use it? Is it because it's just too hard to show it? | Chris Adams [34:30] 
• How to use GenAI models if you care about the energy they consume | Chris Adams 
• GitHub - Energy and Carbon Tracking for OpenCode 
• Release Guide: CO2.js v0.18 - Green Web Foundation [40:31]
• Putting things in perspective: Data center investments now on par with renewables, oil and gas [49:14]

Events:

• Sustainable AI for Climate Tech Founders (April 22, 1:00 pm PDT - San Francisco) [51:32]
• Sustainable AI (April 23, 6:00 pm CEST - Utrecht) [51:41]
• HotCarbon Workshop 

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!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosts Adi and Valeria cover new research showing that faster AI models do not always use less energy, especially when multiple models run in parallel. They highlight how the lack of standardized metrics makes it difficult to fairly compare energy efficiency and can lead to inconsistent reporting. They also discuss a curated set of open-source tools for measuring software energy use and why measurement is a critical but challenging first step. Finally, they explore a broader view of digital sustainability beyond carbon and highlight the launch of the Green Software Foundation website as a key resource.

Learn more about our people:

• Aditya Manglik: LinkedIn | GitHub | Website
• Valeria Salis: LinkedIn | GitHub | Website

Find out more about the GSF:

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

News:

• Benchmarking the Energy Savings with Speculative Decoding Strategies | ACL Anthology [02:11]
• A Curated List of Open-source Software‑only Energy Efficiency Measurement Tools: A GitHub Mining Study [12:32]
• What do we mean by Digital Sustainability? | Catherine Mulligan [19:33]
• Green Software Foundation [25:42] 
• Green Software Movement [27:21]

Events:

• When Sustainable Product Design Becomes Strategic Advantage | 7 Apr 5:00pm CEST (Virtual) [28:17] 
• GreenOps PowerBI Dashboard | 7 Apr 6:30pm CEST (Karlsruhe, hybrid) [28:32]
• CodeCarbon x Pruna x Ecologits Frugal AI Party | 8 Apr 6:00pm CEST (Paris) [28:51]
• Singapore Conference April 14th to 15th 2026 | 14-15 Apr (Singapore) [29:18]

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!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosts Kate and Tzviya unpack the latest news This Week in Green Software, focusing on how sustainability is increasingly being integrated into everyday engineering decisions. They explore the push toward earlier measurement and accountability, the role of tooling in helping developers understand energy use, and the growing influence of policy and industry initiatives. The conversation highlights both the challenges and opportunities in making sustainability a standard part of software design, rather than an afterthought.

Learn more about our people:

• Kate Goldenring: LinkedIn | Website
• Tzviya Siegman: LinkedIn | Website

Find out more about the GSF:

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

News:

• Letter from the Outgoing ED of GSF [01:18]
• When is Local AI Greener than the Cloud? | Intelligent Living [12:52]
• The Green Side of Observability: Why Less Data Can Mean More Insight | DevOps.com [18:30]
• Graphics card environmental impact calculator | Hubblo [22:45]

Resources:

• Software Carbon Intensity (SCI) specification | GSF [02:07]
• SCI for AI | GSF [02:17]
• SCI for Web | GSF [02:33]
• Green Software Practitioner course | GSF [09:00]
• OnePointFive [09:37]
• GreenOps Academy | Greenpixie [09:52] 
• Electricity Maps [15:15]
• Honeycomb Refinery [20:21]
• More than Carbon: Cradle-to-Grave environmental impacts of GenAI training on the Nvidia A100 GPU [25:47]
• From FLOPs to Footprints: The Resource Cost of Artificial Intelligence [26:12]
• Dr. Sasha Luccioni's Award [27:14]

Events:

• Hobby Projects to Green Production Systems (March 31 at 6:00 pm - Budapest) [29:46]
• PowerBI Dashboard (April 7 at 6:30 pm CEST - Karlsruhe - Hybrid) [30:17]
• Green IO Singapore (April 14-15) [30:51]

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!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This Week in Green Software, hosts Oli, Adi, and Valeria explore the growing importance of hourly carbon accounting and what it means for building truly sustainable software. They discuss how moving beyond annual averages to real-time energy data can unlock more accurate insights, better decision-making, and smarter workload placement. The conversation highlights the challenges of measurement, the role of tooling and standards, and why aligning software systems with cleaner energy in the moment could be a key step toward reducing digital emissions.

Learn more about our people:

• Aditya Manglik: LinkedIn | GitHub | Website
• Oli Winks: LinkedIn | GitHub | Website
• Valeria Salis: LinkedIn | GitHub | Website

Find out more about the GSF:

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

News:

• GSF’s Response to GHG Protocol: Advocating for Hourly Carbon Accounting | GSF [03:11]
• Big Tech Says Generative AI Will Save the Planet. It Doesn’t Offer Much Proof | Wired [19:25]
• Developer engagement in open-source software’s green transition | Nature
• Display: green; applying the web sustainability guidelines - Hidde de Vries - CSS Day 2025 | YouTube

Resources:

• GHG Protocol [03:27]
• What Central Park’s Squirrel Census says about conservation tech | Mongabay [30:54]

Events:

• GreenOps PowerBI Dashboard | 7 Apr 6:30pm CEST (Karlsruhe - Hybrid) [44:25]
• Green IO Singapore Conference | 14-15 Apr (Singapore) [45:24]

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!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

TWiGS hosts Tzviya and Kate are joined by Ryan Sholin of Electricity Maps to discuss how global events impact electricity availability, cost, and carbon intensity. They highlight that improving efficiency and better utilizing existing power grids could reduce the need for new energy infrastructure. The conversation connects energy awareness with software design decisions, emphasizing that developers and organizations can play a role in sustainability by aligning workloads with cleaner energy and understanding the broader energy context behind digital systems.

Learn more about our people:

• Tzviya Siegman: LinkedIn | Website
• Ryan Sholin: LinkedIn | GitHub | Website
• Kate Goldenring: LinkedIn | GitHub | Website

Find out more about the GSF:

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

News:

• Exclusive: Google, Tesla, others tackle energy affordability | Axios [02:10]
• Virginia to utilities: Do more with the existing power grid | CanaryMedia [03:38] 
• There's another energy market that may get hit harder than oil by Strait of Hormuz closure [10:08]
• PUE Ranking - Paweł Czyżak on LinkedIn [14:44]
• Markdown, llms.txt and AI crawlers | Dries Buytaert [25:44]
• Datacentre developers face calls to disclose effect on UK’s net emissions | The Guardian [39:14]

Events:

• LUT x Sustinaires | 25 Mar 7:15 AM CET (Remote) [41:29] 
• UX Jumpstart | 26 Mar 2:00 PM CET (Virtual) [41:46] 
• Are you speaking about Green Software? | GSF [41:59] 

Resources:

• Marc Brooker's Blog [06:32]
• Environment Variables Ep 133: TWiGS: Who Pays for AI’s Energy Footprint? [07:09]
• US data centre efficiency ranked by PUE - Rod McLaren: Words that work 
• TPU vs GPU: Which Is Better for AI Infrastructure in 2025? [19:57]
• TPUs improved carbon-efficiency of AI workloads by 3x | Google Cloud Blog  
• Software Carbon Intensity for Artificial Intelligence [21:51]
• Hugging Face AI Energy Score Project [22:43]
• Google & Bing Warn: Markdown Files Can Increase Crawl Load and Cause SEO Issues [27:35]
• Introducing Markdown for Agents [28:57]
• agent-md | GitHub 
• w3c-cg / ai-content-disclosure | GitHub [30:02]
• AI Preferences 
• Measuring for Reporting vs Measuring for Action | GSF 
• CarbonDB [34:22]

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!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This Week in Green Software, Valeria, Adi, and Oli come together to explore the concept of Shift-Left Sustainability—the idea that environmental impact should be considered early in the software development lifecycle rather than after deployment. They discuss how better measurement, developer tooling, and practical incentives can help teams build more efficient and environmentally responsible software, why sustainability should be treated more like security, and highlight growing government interest in digital sustainability.

Learn more about our people:

• Valeria Salis: LinkedIn | GitHub | Website
• Aditya Manglik: LinkedIn | GitHub | Website
• Oliver Winks: LinkedIn | GitHub | Website

Find out more about the GSF:

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

News:

• Shift-Left Sustainability: How to develop green software by design | Kolaxis [03:42]
• We nearly had power profiling in Chromium | Fershad [18:25]
• GDSA Summit returns: building on our progress | Sustainable ICT [25:36]

Events:

• Green Software Practitioner Study Day | 13 Mar 10:00 am GMT (Brighton) [31:22]
• What Software Doesn’t “Count” | 17 Mar 6:00 pm CET (Barcelona) [3:19]
• Reducing Cost and Carbon | 18 Mar 6:00 pm CET (Hamburg) [33:56]
• LUT x Sustinaires | 25 Mar 7:15 am CET (Virtual) [34:55]
• Green Software Italia | 30 Mar 6:30 pm CET (Milan) [35:18]
• UX Jumpstart 26 Mar 2:00 pm CET (Virtual) [35:42]

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!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Host Kate Goldenring is joined by Chris Adams and Tzviya Siegman for a news round-up on sustainable software. They dig into EnergyNet and the idea of routing electricity more like the internet, unpack the latest AI energy and greenwashing debates, and look at policy and research angles — from proactive water planning for data centers to a cap-and-trade style proposal for AI efficiency.

Learn more about our people:

• Chris Adams: LinkedIn | GitHub | Website
• Kate Goldenring: LinkedIn | Website
• Tzviya Siegman: LinkedIn | Website

Find out more about the GSF:

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

News:

• EnergyNet Task Force [03:50]
• EnergyNet on GitHub [03:50]
• EnergyNet expands to 280 apartments in Lund (Warp News) [03:50]
• Is this EnergyNet thing legit? (Chris Adams) [03:50]
• Sam Altman / OpenAI energy use and data centers (The Guardian) [12:20]
• Big Tech says generative AI will save the planet - proof is thin (WIRED) [01:10]
• Big tech greenwashing report (Ketan Joshi) [13:20]
• Different kinds of AI in the climate context (Chris Adams) [15:00]
• AI's Never Just One Thing: Different FLOPS for Different Folks (Hugging Face) [18:20]
• Great Lakes region unprepared for increasing water use demands(Alliance for the Great Lakes) [30:10]
• AI Cap-and-Trade: Efficiency Incentives for Accessibility and Sustainability [36:20]

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!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Asim Hussain introduces more new co-hosts on this episode of TWiGS as they explore the evolving intersection of AI, infrastructure, and sustainability. The discussion covers the growing energy demands of AI workloads, the tension between innovation and environmental impact, and the role of standards and policy in guiding responsible growth. From data center expansion to practical steps engineers can take today, the hosts share insights on how the tech industry can balance rapid advancement with measurable climate accountability.

Learn more about our people:

• Asim Hussain: LinkedIn | GitHub | Website
• Aditya Manglik: LinkedIn | GitHub | Website
• Carlos Pignatoro: LinkedIn | GitHub | Website
• Oli Winks: LinkedIn | GitHub | Website
• Valeria Salis: LinkedIn | GitHub | Website

Find out more about the GSF:

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

News:

• Why AI's water problem might actually be an opportunity | World Economic Forum [06:13]
• GreenOps - CloudBolt: Greener cloud usage multiplies with Kubernetes optimisation [23:51]
• Enabled emissions: How AI helps to supercharge oil and gas production [35:05]

Events:

• Sustainable AI: Your 2026 Playbook | 19 Feb 18:00 GMT (Virtual) [45:31]
• Meme-tivism: Rethinking the Environmental Footprint of AI & ML | King's College London | 23 Feb (London) [45:54]
• Code Green London | 24 Feb 18:30 GMT (London) [46:13]
• Green Software Development Karlsruhe: How Apps Can Emit Less CO₂ | 03 Mar (Karlsruhe) [46:22] 
• Optimizing AI Inference: How to Cut Costs, Latency & Energy | 12 Mar 18:30 CET (Barcelona) [46:35] 
• AI, the ultimate green software challenge | 12 Mar 8:30 GMT (Virtual) [46:48]
• AI & Sustainability | 12 Mar 15:00 AEDT (Sydney) [47:02]
• Green Software Practitioner Study Day - Silicon Brighton | 13 Mar (Brighton) [47:12]

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!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This Week in Green Software, Chris Adams is joined by new co-hosts Kate Goldenring and Tzviya Siegman to explore the latest stories on their radars. They unpack Microsoft’s community-first AI infrastructure pledge, the rise of gas-powered data centers, and the hidden embodied emissions behind AI models and storage hardware. The conversation also dives into the energy cost of AI prompts, new research measuring real browser energy use, and emerging models like billing AI by the kilowatt-hour. Together, they examine how transparency, standards, and smarter engineering decisions can shape a more sustainable digital future.

Learn more about our people:

• Chris Adams: LinkedIn | GitHub | Website
• Kate Goldenring: LinkedIn | Website
• Tzviya Siegman: LinkedIn | Website

Find out more about the GSF:

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

News:

• Building Community-First AI Infrastructure - Microsoft [05:00]
• Microsoft Pledged to Save Water in the A.I. Era - The New York Times [08:29]
• Building Community-First AI Infrastructure - Microsoft On the Issues 
• Betting big on data centers, U.S. now leads world for new gas power development - Global Energy Monitor [13:56]
• The Robles v. Domino’s Settlement (And Why It Matters) [21:56]
• From FLOPs to Footprints: The Resource Cost of Artificial Intelligence [23:53]
• The Cost of Politeness in AI [29:54]
• Green Coding Solutions: webNRG Released [36:50]
• Energy-Aware Hosted Inference | Neuralwatt Portal [42:35]

Resources:

• Environment Variables Ep 62: Greening Serverless w/ Kate Goldenring [11:24]
• Environment Variables Ep 104: OCP, Wooden Datacentres and Cleaning up Datacentre Diesel w/ Karl Rabe [12:16]
• GitHub - Green-Software-Foundation/real-time-cloud: Real Time Energy and Carbon Standards for Cloud Providers [14:56]
• Web Sustainability Guidelines | W3C [20:14]
• WCAG 2 Overview | Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) | W3C [21:00] 
• Software Carbon Intensity (SCI) Specification | GSF [23:22]
• Ecoinvent [27:06]
• Solar power in Finland - Energy [44:38]
• On using solar & batteries to provide 90% of the world population with 90% of their electricity demand for below 90 €/MWh | Chris Adams 
• Solar and batteries can power the world 
• How Did This State Become the Data Center Capital of the World?  
• Subsidizing the Cloud: U.S. State Incentives to Data Centers 
• Scope True - Reality-Based Corporate Carbon Accounting For the Decarbonization 
• webNRG 
• GitHub - webNRG 

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!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.