Environment Variables

Guest host Anne Currie speaks with Boris Gamazaychikov, Head of AI Sustainability at Salesforce, about aligning artificial intelligence with environmental responsibility. They explore the wide range of energy impacts across AI models, the development of the AI Energy Score benchmarking tool, and why transparency is essential for sustainable choices.

Guest host Anne Currie speaks with Boris Gamazaychikov, Head of AI Sustainability at Salesforce, about aligning artificial intelligence with environmental responsibility.

Host Chris Adams is joined by Asim Hussain to explore the latest news from The Week in Green Software. They look at Hugging Face’s AI energy tools, Mistral’s lifecycle analysis, and the push for better data disclosure in the pursuit for AI sustainability. They discuss how prompt design, context windows, and model choice impact emissions, as well as the role of emerging standards like the Software Carbon Intensity for AI, and new research on website energy use.

In this episode of Environment Variables, host Chris Adams welcomes Scott Chamberlin, co-founder of Neuralwatt and ex-Microsoft Software Engineer, to discuss energy transparency in large language models (LLMs). They explore the challenges of measuring AI emissions, the importance of data center transparency, and projects that work to enable flexible, carbon-aware use of AI. Scott shares insights into the current state of LLM energy reporting, the complexities of benchmarking across vendors, and how collaborative efforts can help create shared metrics to guide responsible AI development.

Anne Currie is joined by Sean Varley, Chief Evangelist and VP of Business Development at Ampere Computing, a leader in building energy-efficient, cloud-native processors. They unpack the energy demands of AI, why power caps and utilization matter more than raw compute, and how to rethink metrics like performance-per-rack for a greener digital future. Sean also discusses Ampere’s role in the AI Platform Alliance, the company’s partnership with Rakuten, and how infrastructure choices impact the climate trajectory of AI.

Chris Adams is joined by Adrian Cockcroft, former VP of Cloud Architecture Strategy at AWS, a pioneer of microservices at Netflix, and contributor to the Green Software Foundation’s Real Time Cloud project. They explore the evolution of cloud sustainability—from monoliths to microservices to serverless—and what it really takes to track carbon emissions in real time. Adrian explains why GPUs offer rare transparency in energy data, how the Real Time Cloud dataset works, and what’s holding cloud providers back from full carbon disclosure. Plus, he shares his latest obsession: building a generative AI-powered house automation system using agent swarms.

In this Backstage episode of Environment Variables, podcast producer Chris Skipper highlights the Green Software Foundation’s Software Standards Working Group—chaired by Henry Richardson (WattTime) and Navveen Balani (Accenture). This group is central to shaping global benchmarks for sustainable software. Key initiatives discussed include the Software Carbon Intensity (SCI) Specification, its extensions for AI and the web, the Real-Time Energy and Carbon Standard for cloud providers, the SCI Guide, and the TOSS framework. Together, these tools aim to drive emissions reduction through interoperable, transparent, and globally applicable standards.

It’s been three years of Environment Variables! What a landmark year for the Green Software Foundation. From launching behind-the-scenes Backstage episodes, to covering the explosive impact of AI on software emissions, to broadening our audience through beginner-friendly conversations; this retrospective showcases our mission to create a trusted ecosystem for sustainable software. Here’s to many more years of EV!

Chris Adams is joined by Thibaud Colas; product lead at Torchbox, president of the Django Software Foundation, and lead on Wagtail CMS. They explore the role of open source projects in tackling digital carbon emissions and discuss Wagtail's pioneering carbon footprint reporting, sustainable default settings, and grid-aware website features, all enabled through initiatives like Google Summer of Code. Thibaud shares how transparency, contributor motivation, and clear governance can drive impactful sustainability efforts in web development, and why measuring and reducing emissions in the Python ecosystem matters now more than ever.

Environment Variables host Anne Currie welcomes Jamie Dobson, co-founder of Container Solutions and author of the upcoming book Visionaries, Rebels and Machines. Together, they explore the history and future of cloud computing through the lens of sustainability, efficiency, and resilience. Drawing on insights from their past work, including The Cloud Native Attitude and Building Green Software, they discuss how cloud-native principles can support the transition to renewable energy, the potential and pitfalls of AI, and why behavioral change, regulation, and smart incentives are key to a greener digital future.

Host Chris Adams speaks with James Martin about how to communicate the environmental impact of software to a general audience. Drawing on his background in journalism and sustainability communications, James shares strategies for translating complex digital sustainability issues into accessible narratives, explains why AI's growing resource demands require scrutiny, and highlights France’s leadership in frugal AI policy and standards. From impact calculators to debunking greenwashing, this episode unpacks how informed storytelling can drive responsible tech choices.

Chris Adams is joined by Zachary Smith and My Truong both members of the Hardware Standards Working Group at the GSF. They dive into the challenges of improving hardware efficiency in data centers, the importance of standardization, and how emerging technologies like two-phase liquid cooling systems can reduce emissions, improve energy reuse, and even support power grid stability. They also discuss grid operation and the potential of software-hardware coordination to drastically cut infrastructure impact.

Host Anne Currie is joined by Charles Humble; a writer, podcaster, and former CTO with a decade’s experience helping technologists build better systems—both technically and ethically. Together, they discuss how developers and companies can make smarter, greener choices in the cloud, as well as the trade-offs that should be considered. They discuss the road that led to the present state of generative AI, the effect it has had on the planet, as well as their hopes for a more sustainable future.

In this special backstage episode of Environment Variables, producer Chris Skipper spotlights the Green AI Committee, an initiative of the Green Software Foundation launched in 2024. Guests Thomas Lewis and Sanjay Podder share the committee’s mission to reduce AI's environmental impact through strategic focus on measurement, policy influence, and lifecycle optimization. The episode explores the committee’s approach to defining and implementing “green AI,” its contributions to public policy and ISO standards, and collaborative efforts to build tools, best practices, and educational resources that promote sustainable AI development.

Chris Adams sits down in-person with Max Schulze, founder of the Sustainable Digital Infrastructure Alliance (SDIA), to explore the economics of AI, digital infrastructure, and green software. They unpack the EU's Energy Efficiency Directive and its implications for data centers, the importance of measuring and reporting digital resource use, and why current conversations around AI and cloud infrastructure often miss the mark without reliable data. Max also introduces the concept of "digital resources" as a clearer way to understand and allocate environmental impact in cloud computing. The conversation highlights the need for public, transparent reporting to drive better policy and purchasing decisions in digital sustainability.

Host Chris Adams is joined by special guest Karl Rabe, founder of WoodenDataCenter and co-lead of the Open Compute Project’s Data Center Facilities group, to discuss sustainable data center design and operation. They explore how colocating data centers with renewable energy sources like wind farms can reduce carbon emissions, and how using novel materials like cross-laminated timber can significantly cut the embodied carbon of data center infrastructure. Karl discusses replacing traditional diesel backup generators with cleaner alternatives like HVO, as well as designing modular, open-source hardware for increased sustainability and transparency. The conversation also covers the growing need for energy-integrated, community-friendly data centers to support the evolving demands of AI and the energy transition in a sustainable fashion.

Host Chris Adams sits down with James Hall, Head of GreenOps at Greenpixie, to explore the evolving discipline of GreenOps—applying operational practices to reduce the environmental impact of cloud computing. They discuss how Greenpixie helps organizations make informed sustainability decisions using certified carbon data, the challenges of scaling cloud carbon measurement, and why transparency and relevance are just as crucial as accuracy. They also discuss using financial cost as a proxy for carbon, the need for standardization through initiatives like FOCUS, and growing interest in water usage metrics.

Host Anne Currie is joined by the seasoned Chris Liljenstolpe to talk about the latest trends shaping sustainable technology. They dive into the energy demands of AI-driven data centers and ask the big question around nuclear power in green computing. Discussing the trajectory of AI and data center technology, they take a look into the past of another great networking technology, the internet, to gain insights into the future of energy-efficient innovation in the tech industry.

In this episode, Chris Skipper takes us backstage into the Green Software Patterns Project, an open-source initiative designed to help software practitioners reduce emissions by applying vendor-neutral best practices. Guests Franziska Warncke and Liya Mathew, project leads for the initiative, discuss how organizations like AVEVA and MasterCard have successfully integrated these patterns to enhance software sustainability. They also explore the rigorous review process for new patterns, upcoming advancements such as persona-based approaches, and how developers and researchers can contribute.

For this 100th episode of Environment Variables, guest host Anne Currie is joined by Holly Cummins, senior principal engineer at Red Hat, to discuss the intersection of AI, efficiency, and sustainable software practices. They explore the concept of "Lightswitch Ops"—designing systems that can easily be turned off and on to reduce waste—and the importance of eliminating zombie servers. They cover AI’s growing energy demands, the role of optimization in software sustainability, and Microsoft's new shift in cloud investments. They also touch on AI regulation and the evolving strategies for balancing performance, cost, and environmental impact in tech.