Environment Variables

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.Learn more about our people:Chris Adams: LinkedIn | GitHub | WebsiteAdrian Cockcroft: LinkedIn | GitHub | MediumFind out more about the GSF:The Green Software Foundation Website Sign up to the Green Software Foundation NewsletterResources:Serverless vs. Microservices vs. Monolith – Adrian's influential blog post [08:08]Monitorama 2022: Monitoring Carbon – Adrian’s talk at Monitorama Portland [25:08]Real Time Cloud Project – Green Software Foundation [30:23]Google Cloud Sustainability Report (2024) – Includes regional carbon data [33:39]Microsoft Sustainability Report [36:49]AWS Sustainability Practices & AWS Customer Carbon Footprint Tool [39:59]Kepler – Kubernetes-based Efficient Power Level Exporter [48:01]Focus – FinOps Sustainability Working Group [50:10]Agent Swarm by Reuven Cohen – AI agent-based coding framework [01:05:01]Claude AI by Anthropic [01:05:32]GitHub Codespaces [01:11:47]Soopra AI – Chat with an AI trained on Adrian’s blog [01:17:01]If you enjoyed this episode then please either:Follow, rate, and review on Apple PodcastsFollow and rate on SpotifyWatch our videos on The Green Software Foundation YouTube Channel!Connect with us on Twitter, Github and LinkedIn!TRANSCRIPT BELOW:Adrian Cockcroft: We figured out it wasn't really possible to get real time energy statistics out of cloud providers because the numbers just didn't exist.It turns out the only place you can get real time numbers is on things that are not virtualized.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 Environment Variables, where we bring you the latest news and updates from the world of sustainable software development. I'm your host, Chris Adams. If you have worked in cloud computing for any length of time, then even if you do not know the name yet yourself, it's very likely that the way you design systems will have been influenced by my guest today, Adrian Cockcroft.When at Netflix, Adrian led the move to the cloud there helping, popularize many of the patterns we use when deploying applications ourselves to the cloud. And his name then became synonymous with serverless throughout the 2010s when he joined AWS first leading on open source engagement, and then as a VP focused on what we might refer to now as cloud sustainability.After leaving AWS, Adrian's kept his fingers in many pies, one of which is the Green Software Foundation's real time cloud project, an initiative to bring transparency and consistency to cloud emissions reporting. With the first dataset release from that project out the door, it seemed a good idea to invite him onto the show to see what's up.Adrian, thank you so much for joining us today. Can I give you a bit of time to tell us about yourself and what you are, what's what you're keeping? What's keeping you busy these days? I.Adrian Cockcroft: Yeah, it's great to see you and thanks also for your contributions to the project. We've had a lot of discussions over the last few years as we've worked on that together. well, I'm sort of semi-retired. I stopped my big corporate job at Amazon in 2022. and yeah, I spend my time worrying about my family.I've got old parents that live in the uk, so I spend a lot of time with them. And, fixing stuff around the house and generally goofing around and doing things I feel like doing rather than stuff that's driven by some corporate agenda. So I'm enjoying that freedom. And, let's see the, yeah, I spend time on the, Green Software Foundation project.I go to a few conferences and give a few talks and I try to keep up with, you know, what's happening in technology by playing around with whatever the latest tools are and things like that. And that's been my career over the years. I've generally been an early adopter through my entire career. as you mentioned, we were early adopters in cloud.Back when people said This isn't gonna work and you'll be back in the data center soon. People forgot that was the initial reaction to what we said. it's a little bit like that now with people saying, all this AI stuff doesn't work and we're gonna be giving up and whatever. And it's like, well, I'm making bits of it work well enough to be interesting.We can talk a bit about that later. and then I know you probably see behind me various musical instruments and things like that, so that's kind of, I, collect musical instruments that I don't have time to really learn how to play and mess around and make bad noises that make me happy. But luckily no one else has to listen to them particularly.So that's kind of my, that and messing around with cars and things, that's sort of the entertainment for me.Chris Adams: That sounds like quite a fun, state of stem semi-retirement, I have to say actually. So before we dive into the details of cloud, I have to ask, where are you calling from today Because you have an English accent and like, I have an English accent, but I'm calling from Berlin and I'm guessing you're not in England, so maybe you could do that.'cause I follow you on social media and I see all these kind of cryptic and interesting posts about cars and stuff and it's usually sunnier than where I am as well. So there's gotta be a story there. What's going on there, Adrian?Adrian Cockcroft: Well, I lived in England long enough to decide I didn't want to be rained on all the time. which is why I never moved to Seattle when, you know, I didn't move to California to move to America to go live in somewhere with the same weather as England. So that was one reason I never moved to Seattle when I was working for Amazon.So used to live in the Bay Area in Los Gatos, near Netflix. about five years ago we moved down near Monterey, about an hour or two south of the Bay Area. I. Depending on traffic. we are within earshot of a race track called Laguna Seka that most people know. I can kind of see it outta my window.I can see a few dots on the horizon on the, you know, moving and that's, there's a few cars you can just about hear them on if they're loud cars. and this is where they have in every August, this thing called Monterey Car Week with the Pebble Beach concourse and historic races. And we used to go to that every year and we like the kind of messing around with cars and going to the track occasionally culture.So we moved down here and that's been, it's been fun. It's, you know, I don't have to commute anywhere. We have a nice place. The house prices are a lot cheaper down here than they are in the Bay Area itself. So we live in, technically we live in Salinas. lots of good vegetables around here. That's where a lot of the growers are.and it's, we live actually out in the countryside, sort of. Just in the hills near, near there. So we have a nice place, have plenty of room for messing around and a big house, which requires lots of messing around with. And we can talk a bit about one of the projects I have later on to try and automate some of that.Chris Adams: Yeah, that's quite a hint. Alright, well that does explain all the kind of cars and coffee stuff when I, like say 30 verse and Okay. If you're near a racetrack, that would explain some of the cars as well. Alright. Thank youAdrian Cockcroft: Well, actually there's cars and coffee events just about everywhere in the world. If you, like looking at old cars and hanging out with car people, there's one probably every Saturday morning somewhere within 10 miles away. Pretty much anyone. Anyway, the other things, on that front that's sort of more related to Green Software Foundation is we've had a whole bunch of electric cars over the years.I have one of the original Tesla Roadster cars that was made in 2010. I've had it since 2013. it actually has a sticker on the back saying, I bought this before Elon went nuts. so I'm keeping that. we used to have a Tesla model three and we replaced it recently with a Polestar three, which is quite a nice car with very bad software initially.But they did a software update recently that basically fixed just about every bug and we, it's actually fun driving a car where you don't worry if it's about to do something strange and need a software reset, which was the state it was in when we first got it in April. But the difference, a bug fix can make whether they actually went and just fixed everything that was currently going wrong with it and went, transformed the car into something That's just actually a fun thing to drive now.Chris Adams: So it was a bit like turning it off and turning it off and on again. And then you've got like a working car,Adrian Cockcroft: Yeah. Well, yeah, we got really used to pushing the reset button. You hold the volume control down for 30 seconds and that resets the software and we would be doing that most days that we drove itChris Adams: Oh my God. I didn't realize that was a real thing that people did. Wow.Adrian Cockcroft: Yeah. It's one of these things where a product can be transformed from something buggy and annoying to, oh, we just fixed all the software now.It actually works properly. And, you know,

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. Learn more about our people:Chris Skipper: LinkedIn | WebsiteNavveen Balani: LinkedInFind out more about the GSF:The Green Software Foundation Website Sign up to the Green Software Foundation NewsletterResources:Software Standards Working Group [00:18]GSF Directory | Projects [01:06]https://wiki.greensoftware.foundation/proj-mycelium [03:57]Software Carbon Intensity (SCI) Specification | GSF [04:18] Impact Framework [08:09]Carbon Aware SDK [09:11]Green Software Patterns [09:32]Awesome Green Software | GitHub [10:11]Software Carbon Intensity for AI [10:58]Software Carbon Intensity for Web [12:24]Events:Developer Week 2025 (July 3 · Mannheim) [13:20]Green IO Munich (July 3-4) [13:35]EVOLVE [25]: Shaping Tomorrow (July 4 · Brighton) [13:51]Grid-Aware Websites (July 6 at 7:00 pm CEST · Amsterdam) [14:03]Master JobRunr v8: A Live-Coding Webinar (July 6 · Virtual) [14:20]Blue Angle for Software / Carbon Aware Computing (July 9 at 6:30 pm CEST · Berlin) [14:30]Shaping Progress Responsibly—AI and Sustainability (July 10 at 6:00 pm CEST · Frankfurt am Main) [14:41]Green Data Center for Green Software (July 15 at 6:30 pm CEST · Hybrid · Karlsruhe) [14:52]If you enjoyed this episode then please either:Follow, rate, and review on Apple PodcastsFollow and rate on SpotifyWatch our videos on The Green Software Foundation YouTube Channel!Connect with us on Twitter, Github and LinkedIn!TRANSCRIPT BELOW:Chris Skipper: Welcome to Backstage, the behind the scenes series from Environment Variables, where we take a look at the Green Software Foundation's key initiatives and working groups. I'm the producer and host, Chris Skipper. Today we are shining a spotlight on the Green Software Foundation's Software Standards working group. This group plays a critical role in shaping the specifications and benchmarks that guide the development of green software.Chaired by Henry Richardson, a senior analyst at what time, and Navveen Balani, managing Director and Chief Technologist for Technology Sustainable Innovation at Accenture, the group's mission is to build baseline specifications that can be used across the world, whether you're running systems in a cloud environment in Europe or on the ground in a developing country.In other words, the Software Standards Working Group is all about creating interoperable, reliable standards, tools that allow us to measure, compare, and improve the sustainability of software in a meaningful way.Some of the major projects they lead at the Green Software Foundation include the Software Carbon Intensity Specification, or SCI, which defines how to calculate the carbon emissions of software; the SCI for Artificial Intelligence, which extends this framework to cover the unique challenges of measuring emissions from AI workloads; the SCI for Web, which focuses on emissions from websites and front end systems;the Realtime Energy and Carbon Standard for Cloud Providers, which aims to establish benchmarks for emissions data and cloud platforms;the SCI Guide, which helps organizations navigate energy carbon intensity and embodied emissions methodologies,and the Transforming Organizations for Sustainable Software, or TOSS framework, which offers a broader blueprint for integrating sustainability across business and development processes.Together these initiatives support the foundation's broader mission to reduce the total change in global carbon emissions associated with software by prioritizing abatement over offsetting, and building trust through open, transparent, and inclusive standards. Now for some recent updates from the working group.Earlier this year, the group made a big move by bringing the SCI for AI project directly into its core focus. As the world turns more and more to artificial intelligence, figuring out how to measure AI's energy use and emissions footprint is becoming a priority. That's why they've committed to developing a baseline SCI specification for AI over the next few months, drawing on insights from a recent Green AI committee workshop and collaborating closely with experts across the space.There's also growing interest in extending the SCI framework beyond carbon. In a recent meeting, the group discussed the potential for creating a software water intensity metric, a way to track water usage associated with digital infrastructure, especially data centers. While that comes with some challenges, including limited data access from cloud providers, it reflects the working group's commitment to looking at sustainability from multiple environmental angles.To help shape these priorities,they've also launched a survey across the foundation, which collected feedback from members. Should the group focus more on Web and mobile technologies, which represent a huge slice of the developer ecosystem? Should they start exploring procurement and circularity? what about realtime cloud data or hardware software integration?The survey aims to get clear answers and direct the group's resources more effectively. The group also saw new projects take shape, like the Immersion Cooling Specifications, designed to optimize cooling systems for data centers, and the Mycelium project, which is creating a standard data model to allow software and infrastructure to better talk to each other, enabling smarter energy aware decisions at runtime.So that's a brief overview of the software standards working group. A powerhouse behind the standards and specs that are quietly transforming how the world builds software. Now let's explore more of the work that the Software Standards Working Group is doing with the software Carbon Intensity Specification, the SCI. A groundbreaking framework designed to help developers and organizations calculate, understand, and reduce the environmental impact of their software.The SCI specification offers a standardized methodology for measuring carbon intensity, empowering the tech industry to make more informed decisions in designing and deploying greener software systems. For this part of the podcast, we aim some questions at Navveen Balani from Accenture, one of the co-chairs of the Software Standards working group.Navveen rather graciously provided us with some sound bites as answers.  Chris Skipper: My first question for Navveen was about the SCI specification and its unique methodology.The SCI specification introduces a unique methodology for calculating carbon intensity using the factors of energy efficiency, hardware efficiency, and carbon awareness. Can you share more about how this methodology was developed and its potential to drive innovation in software development?Navveen Balani: Thank you, Chris. The software carbon intensity specification was developed to provide a standardized, actionable way to measure theenvironmental impact of software. What makes it unique is its focus on three core levels,energy efficiency, hardware efficiency, and carbon awareness. Energy efficiencylooks at how much electricity a piece of software consumes to perform a task.So writing optimized code, minimizing unnecessary processing, and improving performance, all contribute. Hardware efficiency considers how effectively the software uses the infrastructure it runs on,getting more done with fewer resources and carbon awareness adds a critical layer by factoring in when and where software runs.By understanding the carbon intensity of electricity grids, applications can shift workloads to cleaner energy regions or time windows. The methodology was shaped through deep collaboration within the Green Software Foundation involving practitioners, academics, and industry leaders from member organizations.It was designed to be not only scientifically grounded, but also practical, measurable and adaptable across different environments. What truly sets SCI apart and drives innovation is its focus on reduction rather than offsets. The specification emphasizes direct actions that teams can take to lower emissions, like optimizing compute usage, improving code efficiency, or adopting carbon aware scheduling.These aren't theoretical ideas. They're concrete, easy to implement practices that can be embedded into the existing development lifecycle. So SCI is more than just a carbon metric. It's a practical framework that empowers developers and organizations to build software that's efficient, high performing, and environmentally responsible by design.Chris Skipper: The SCI encourages developers to use granular, real world data where possible. Are there any tools or technologies you'd recommend to developers and teams to better align with the SCI methodology and promote carbon aware software design?Navveen Balani: Absolutely.One of the most powerful aspects of the SCI specification is its encouragement to use real world, granular data to inform decisions, and there are already a number of tools available to help developers and teams put this into practice. A great example is the Impact Framework, which is designed to make the environmental impact of software easier to calculate and share.What's powerful about itis that it doesn't require complex setup or custom code. Developers simply define their system using a lightweight manifest file,and the framework takes care ofthe rest — calculating metrics like carbon emissions in a standardized, transparent way, this makes it easier f

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!Learn more about our people:Chris Adams: LinkedIn | GitHub | WebsiteAnne Currie: LinkedInChris Skipper: LinkedInPindy Bhullar: LinkedInLiya Mathew: LinkedInAsim Hussain: LinkedInHolly Cummins: LinkedInCharles Tripp: LinkedInDawn Nafus: LinkedInMax Schulze: LinkedInKillian Daly: LinkedInJames Martin: LinkedInFind out more about the GSF:The Green Software Foundation Website Sign up to the Green Software Foundation NewsletterResources:Backstage: TOSS Project (02:26)Backstage: Green Software Patterns (04:51)The Week in Green Software: Obscuring AI’s Real Carbon Output (07:41)The Week in Green Software: Sustainable AI Progress (09:51)AI Energy Measurement for Beginners (12:57)The Economics of AI (15:22)How to Tell When Energy Is Green with Killian Daly (17:47)How to Explain Software to Normal People with James Martin (20:29)If you enjoyed this episode then please either:Follow, rate, and review on Apple PodcastsFollow and rate on SpotifyWatch our videos on The Green Software Foundation YouTube Channel!Connect with us on Twitter, Github and LinkedIn!TRANSCRIPT BELOW:Chris Skipper: Welcome to Environment Variables from the Green Software Foundation. The podcast that brings you the latest in sustainable software development has now been running for three years.So that's three years of the latest news in green software, talking about everything from AI energy through to the cloud, and its effect on our environment and how we as a software community can make things better for everybody else.This past year Environment Variables has truly embodied the mission of the Green Software Foundation, and that's to create a trusted ecosystem of people, standards, tools, and best practices for creating and building green software. Now this episode's gonna feature some of the more key episodes that we did over the last year.We're gonna be looking at a wide variety of topics and it's going to be hopefully a nice journey back through both the timeline of the podcast, but also the landscape of green software over the last year and how it has dramatically changed, not only due to the dramatic rise in use of AI amongst other things, but also just to the fantastic ideas that people have brought to the table in order to try and solve the problem of trying to decarbonize software. So without further ado, let's dive in to the first topic.​Chris Skipper: First, we brought about a new change in the way the podcast was structured. A new type of episode called Backstage.Backstage is basically a behind the scenes look at the Green Software Foundation, internal projects and working groups. It's a space for our community to hear directly from project leaders to share the wins and their lessons learned and reinforce trust and transparency, which is one of the core tenets of the Green Software Foundation Manifesto.Now, there were a bunch of great projects that were featured over the last year. We're gonna look at two specifically.In our first backstage episode, we introduced the TOSS project. TOSS stands for Transforming Organizations for Sustainable Software, and it's led by the fantastic Pindy Bhullar. This project aims to embed sustainability into business strategy and operations through a four pillar framework.. It's a perfect example of how the foundation operationalizes its mission to minimize emissions by supporting organizations on their sustainability journey.Let's hear the snippet from Pendi explaining these four pillars.Pindy Bhullar: Transforming organizations for sustainable software is the acronym for toss. Businesses will be able to utilize the toss framework as a guide to lay the groundwork for managing change and also improving software operations in the future, software practices within organizations can be integrated with sustainability in a cohesive and agile manner, rather than addressing green software practices in an isolated approach.For a company to fully benefit from sustainable transformation of their software development processes, we need to review all aspects of technology. The Toss framework is designed to be embedded across multiple aspects of its business operations. Dividing the task framework along four pillars has allowed for simultaneous, top down and bottom up reinforcement of sustainable practices, as well as the integration of new tools, processes, and regulations that I merge over time.The four pillars aim to foster a dynamic foundation for companies to understand where to act now, to adjust later and expand within organizational's sustainable software transformation. The four pillars are strategy, implementation. Operational compliance and regulations and within each of the pillars, we have designed a decision tree that will be constructed to guide organizations in transforming their software journey.Chris Skipper: Some fantastic insights from pindi there, and I'm sure you can agree. The Toss project has an applicability outside of just software development. It's one of those projects that's really gonna grow exponentially in the next few years. Next up, we have green software patterns. Green software Patterns Project is 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 discussed how organizations like Aviva and MasterCard have successfully integrated these patterns to enhance software sustainability. They also explored the rigorous review process for new patterns, upcoming advancements, such as persona based approaches and how developers and researchers can contribute to the project.That's one thing to remember about Backstage is actually highlights that there are so many projects going on at the GSF. We actually need more people to get involved. So if you are interested in getting involved, please Visit greensoftware.foundation to find out more. Let's hear now from Liya Mathew about the Green Software Patterns Project.Liya Mathew: One of the core and most useful features of patterns is the ability to correlate the software carbon intensity specification. Think of it as a bridge that connects learning and measurement. When we look through existing catalog of patterns, one essential thing that stands out is their adaptability.Many of these patterns not only aligned with sustainability, but also coincide with security and reliability best practices. The beauty of this approach is that we don't need to completely rewrite a software architecture. To make it more sustainable. Small actions like catching static data or providing a dark mode can make significant difference.These are simple, yet effective steps that can lead us a long way towards sustainability. Also, we are nearing the graduation of patterns V one. This milestone marks a significant achievement and we are already looking ahead to the next exciting phase. Patterns we two. In patterns we two, we are focusing on persona based and behavioral patterns, which will bring even more tailored and impactful solutions to our community.These new patterns will help address specific needs and behaviors, making our tools even more adaptable and effective.Chris Skipper: Moving on. We also kept our regular episode format The Week in Green Software, also known affectionately as Twigs. So Twigs was originally hosted by Chris Adams and is now occasionally hosted by the Fabulous and Currie as well.It offers quick actionable updates in the green software space with a rising sustainability news. With a rising tide of sustainability and AI developments, this format helps listeners stay current. I can tell you now that in the last year, the number of news topics has just exploded when it comes to anything to do with AI and the impact it's having on the environment.And I think part of that is due to the work of the GSF and its community members. We used to have to really struggle to find news topics when this podcast first started back in 2022. But now in 2025, every week, I would say nearly every hour, there's a new topic coming out about how software is affecting the environment.I. So The Week in Green Software is your one stop place for finding all that information dialed down into one place. And also you can sign up to the GSF newsletter as well via the link below, which will give you a rundown of all the week's latest new topics as well. So let's look at a couple episodes of twigs from the previous year.The first one is an episode with the executive director of the GSF Asim Hussain. Asim really embodies the mission of the GSF in so many ways and is always passionate about the effect that software is having on the environment. In this episode, which was subtitled, Obscuring AI's Real Carbon Output , Asim joined Chris to unpack the complexities of AI's, carbon emissions, renewable energy credits, and regulatory developments.This episode emphasized the need for better carbon accounting practices; work the foundation is helping to advance. Let's hear this little snippet from Asim now.Asim Hussain: You can plant a tree, right? And then you planted the tree. That tree will grow and there's issue there. This drought tree will grow and it'll suck carbon from the atmosphere. And you can say that's a carbon credit at planting a tree. Or there's carbon avoidance offsets and there's many variant, and that's actually very good variance of carbon avoidance offsets.But there is a variant of a carbon avoidance offset where I've got a tree and you pay me not to cut it down. And so where is the additionality? If I'm actually plan

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.Learn more about our people:Chris Adams: LinkedIn | GitHub | WebsiteThibaud Colas: LinkedIn | WebsiteFind out more about the GSF:The Green Software Foundation Website Sign up to the Green Software Foundation NewsletterResources:Wagtail CMS [01:46]Web Almanac | HTTP Archive [08:03]Google Summer of Code [11:07] Wagtail RFCs [19:51] A Gift from Hugging Face on Earth Day: ChatUI-Energy [27:55]PyCon US [36:07]Grid-aware websites - Green Web Foundation [39:22] Climate Action Tech [41:07] Agent Bedlam: A Future of Endless AI Energy Consumption? - My Framer Site Here's how re/insurers can curb GenAI emissions | Reinsurance Business If you enjoyed this episode then please either:Follow, rate, and review on Apple PodcastsFollow and rate on SpotifyWatch our videos on The Green Software Foundation YouTube Channel!Connect with us on Twitter, Github and LinkedIn!TRANSCRIPT BELOW:Thibaud Colas: If you get your contributors to work on high value and high impact things, that's the best way to motivate them. So that's kind of the idea here is, formalize that we have a goal to reduce our footprint. And by virtue of this, we, you know, make it a more impactful thing for people to work on by having those numbers, by communicating this specific change to images, here is the potential for it to reduce 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 Environment Variables, where we bring you the latest news and updates from the world of sustainable software development. I'm your host, Chris Adams. If you want the way we build software to be more sustainable and more inclusive, one way to improve the chances of this happening is to make it easier to build it that way,so building greener software goes with the grain of the software framework you're using. And one way to do that is update the defaults that prioritize accessibility and sustainability in the framework itself. One of the people I've seen who really exemplifies this idea and this approach is my guest today, Thibaud Colas,a lead developer at the software agency, Torchbox, the current president of the Django Software Foundation and the product lead at the popular Wagtail Content Management System, which is also built on top of Django. The Wagtail CMS powers sites like the NASA Jet Propulsion Labs website, the University of Pennsylvania's website, the Tate Gallery, and even the main NHS website in the UK.So while it might not have the same coverage as WordPress, which covers more than a third of the internet, still powers a large number of, a number of large sites, and changes made in this framework can have a decent reach. So changes made here are worth discussing because the Wagtail CMS docs, in my view, are probably the most advanced talking about sustainability for any open source CMS right now.And there's a clear link between sustainability and embodied admissions of the hardware that you actually, that people need to use to access your websites too. And with that in mind, you can see it's got some of the most developed accessibility features as well. But we're getting ahead of ourselves though, and Thibaud is in a much better place to talk about this than me.So Thibaud, thank you so much for joining us. Can I give you the floor to introduce yourself for our listeners?Thibaud Colas: Hi. It's my pleasure, Chris. Thank you for having me. I'm Thibaud, my pronouns are he/him. And, yeah, I'm the product lead, for the Wagtail CMS at Torchbox. Wagtail is an open source project and products, and Torchbox, we are the original creators of the project and main contributors. And, yeah, as product lead I helped shape the work of Torchbox on Wagtail and of other contributors as well. And, as president of the Jingo Software Foundation, I have similar responsibilities for the Django Project. Django being a big Web framework, one of the biggest on Python. Just to give you a sense of scale, Wagtail, that's on the order of 10 to 20,000 sites out there. And Django, we're talking half a million to a million projects.Chris Adams: Cool. Thank you, Thibaud. And, Thibaud, where are you calling me from today? Because, I,Thibaud Colas: I'm in Cambridge, UK. got started on Wagtail way back in New Zealand,but travels took me back to Europe and UK. I'm from France originally.Chris Adams: Oh, cool. Alright, thank you for that. So I'm Chris Adams. I am the co-chair of the Green Software Foundation Policy Working Group. I'm also one of the, we're also, we also have show notes for this.So all the projects and links that we discuss will be available. So in your quest to basically develop better sustain sustainable software engineering skills, that will all be available for this. So we look up podcast.greensoftware.foundation to find that. Alright, Thibaud, we've got a bunch of questions to get through.Shall we start?Thibaud Colas: Yeah, sure.Chris Adams: Okay. Alright. So one thing that I, that really came up on my radar a few years ago when I saw this, was that Wagtail was one of the few, one of the only projects I've seen so far that actually tried to put together a kind of carbon footprint inventory of all over the websites that it's responsible for.And I remember the posts and we'll share a link to this explaining some of this and some figures for this. Like "we reckon that Wagtail was kind of responsible for around like more than 8,000 tons of CO2 per year from all the sites that we run." Could you maybe talk a little bit about, basically the approach you took for that and why you even did that.'Cause there's probably a few discussions about decisions you had to make and trade offs you had to choose between model uses and coming up with numbers and all that. But maybe we go from the beginning about why you started that. Then we can dive into some of the details.Thibaud Colas: Yeah. Yeah. Well, simply enough, you know, when you start to think about the impact of technology on what we build, as developers, at least we love to try and quantify that impact. You know, put some figures on there. And the carbon footprint of websites, well, when you think of the sites, there are lots of components.There's things that happen in the browser, things that happen server side. And when I say server side these days, you know, the infrastructure is quite varied and somewhat opaque as well. So yeah, server side. So when it comes to Wagtail, with it being an open source project, people are, it's quite interoperable with all sorts of databases and file storage and web browsers obviously. So it becomes quite tricky toactually put a number on the emissions of one site. And I guess that's where we started at Torchbox specifically trying to quantify the emissions of our clients for 50 to a hundred websites. And from there, you know, you realize that, it makes lots of sense to try and do it for the whole white tail ecosystem so that you can make hopefully decisions for the whole ecosystem based on sites out there. So yeah.I think it was back in 2023 that we did this first, and there were definitely lots of ways back then to quantify sites' emissions. We didn't necessarily reinvent any, but we tried and understand, okay, when we have little knowledge of those thousands of websites out there, which methodologies should we be referring to when we try and put those figures together? So I say specifically methodologies because I think that's one of the potential pitfalls for developers starting in there. They assume that, somewhat like performance, you canhave quite finite reproducible numbers, but we're just not there yet with the carbon footprint of websites.So I think it's really important that you combine. So in our case, you combine web sustainability guidelines, related methodologies, so it's called sustainable web design model, and that you also combine things that look more closely at the servers, you know, CPU and resource use,and also other aspects in the browser.Chris Adams: Okay, cool. And one thing that I actually quite appreciated when you did this or when, the, you know, the team you are part of did this, was that you, yeah you shared all these numbers, but you also shared the underlying spreadsheets and the working so that other folks who might be running projects themselves can use as either a starting point or even possibly challenge and propose maybe improvements as we learn more about this because we know thatit's a difficult field to kind of navigate right now, but it is getting a bit easier, and as we learn more things, we are able to kind of incorporate that into the way we kind of model and think about some of the interventions we might make to maybe reduce the environmental footprint or improve it basically?Thibaud Colas: Yeah. Yeah, it's a, you might actually be aware of a project, Chris, the HTTP Archive's Web Almanac. They reviewed the whole of the Web on the other of 20 million websites every year, and they produced numbers based on this data set of websites. So that's kind of, I suppose what I tried to follow with this met

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.Learn more about our people:Anne Currie: LinkedIn | WebsiteJamie Dobson: LinkedIn | WebsiteFind out more about the GSF:The Green Software Foundation Website Sign up to the Green Software Foundation NewsletterResources:The Cloud Native Attitude: Amazon.co.uk | Anne Currie, Jamie Dobson [01:21]Building Green Software: O'Riley | Anne Currie, Sarah Hsu, Sara Bergman [01:38]Visionaries, Rebels and Machines: Amazon.com | Jamie Dobson [03:28]Jevons paradox - Wikipedia [11:41]  If you enjoyed this episode then please either:Follow, rate, and review on Apple PodcastsFollow and rate on SpotifyWatch our videos on The Green Software Foundation YouTube Channel!Connect with us on Twitter, Github and LinkedIn!TRANSCRIPT BELOW:Jamie Dobson: We're loaded up all these data centers, we're increasing data sets, but ultimately no matter how much compute and data you throw at an artificial neural network, I think it would never fully replace what a human does. 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. Anne Currie: Hello and welcome to Environment Variables Podcast, where we give you the latest news and updates from the world of sustainable software development. So this week I am your guest host Anne Currie. And you don't have the dulcet tones of Chris Adams, you're left with me this week. So we're gonna do something a little bit different this week.I have got an old friend and colleague and co-author, Jamie Dobson in to talk about it. So Jamie is the co-founder and CEO of a company called Container Solutions. And he's the author of the soon to be released book; Visionaries, Rebels and Machines, which I've read, and that's what we'll be talking a lot about.And he's also the, one of my co-authors of a book I wrote nearly 10 years ago called the Cloud Native Attitude, which is about the principles of moving into the cloud. And there's an awful lot in there about sustainability with that, there's a lot we need to talk about around that. And it was actually for me, the precursor to the book that I wrote which came out with O'Reilly last year, with co-authors Sarah Hsu and Sara Bergman, Building Green Software, which as I always say every week,everybody listening to this podcast should read because you'll find it very interesting and it is couldn't be more germane. So today we're gonna talk about those three books, really, and the thematic links between them all, which are really about resource efficiency, building at scale without it costing a ridiculous amount of money or using a ridiculous amount of resources.And also resilience, which is something we're gonna really have to focus on when it comes to running on renewable power. So, let me let Jamie introduce himself and maybe tell us a little bit about his new book, Visionaries, Rebels, I can never remember whether it's Rebels, visionaries and Machines.It's Visionaries, Rebels and Machines. Go for it, Jamie.Jamie Dobson: Visionaries, Rebels and Machines. That's correct. Hello Anne. Thanks for having me on the podcast. And hello to all your listeners. who tune in every week? Yeah. So my name is Jamie. I am indeed the co-founder of a company called Container Solutions. But it's no longer, I'm no longer, I should say, the chief exec,'cause I handed that role over about a year ago, which is probably why, or, you know, it explains why I could find the time to finish writing this damn book. So Container Solutions is a company that specializes in cloud transformation, helping customers, you know, get off whatever infrastructure they're running on now and get onto, you know, efficient cloud infrastructure.And if we do that right, then it's kind of green and sustainable infrastructure, but it's hard to get right, which I'm sure we're gonna discuss today. Anne Currie: Indeed. Yes. Yes. So, so you've got a book that's about to come out, which I have read, but it's not yet available in, the, in the stores, but it will be available on, in all good book bookstores, Visionaries, Rebels and Machines. And I, the reason why I asked you to come on is because I think there are a lot of ideas in there that would, that we need to be talking about and thinking about.So, so tell us a little bit about Visionaries, Rebels and Machines, and then I'll tell you why I think it's interesting.Jamie Dobson: Absolutely. Yeah. So, so Visionaries, Rebels and Machines, we have to start at a point in time. And that point in time is about four or five years ago. And I was asked the question, "what's the cloud?" It was, the person asking me, it was a junior colleague, new to Container Solutions. And, you know, I started to answer, or at least I opened my mouth,and of course I can answer that question, but I can't answer it necessarily succinctly. So I was asked the question, I think probably around about June, so maybe about five years ago today actually. And over the summer period I was thinking, "God, how do you answer that question? What is the cloud?" And so I started to creep backwards in time.Well, the cloud is, you know, there's a bunch of computers in a warehouse somewhere. But what's a computer? And then once I asked that question. Well, computers are things made up of transistor. Well, what's a transistor? And what I came to the conclusion over the summer, was the following:The cloud can only really be understood in its own historical context. And so interestingly, once we got to the point of, you know, answering the question, what is the cloud? The arrow was already flying. You know, there was a, an arrow was shot round about the late Victorian time at Thomas Edison's Menlo Park facility in New Jersey, and that arrow flew all the way through the last century through the web, through cloud computing, and it continues to fly with the rise of artificial intelligence. And so the last part of the book is, okay, now we know what the cloud is and what it does, where might it take us next in regards to artificial neural networks and all of that stuff? So that was the book. The Visionaries and the Rebels of the people who built teams, built teams that were innovative. All of them had psychological safety even though the, that concept wasn't known at the time. And so, these historical figures are not just ancient history, like not just Thomas Edison, but also the Jeff Bezos's of the world, the Reed Hastings's, and the modern figures of cloud computing. The visionaries and the rebels can teach the rest of us what to do with our machines, including how to make 'em sustainable. Anne Currie: And that is the interesting thing there. So I enjoyed the book. It's, it is quite, it is a readable romp. And I very much connect with your, with your initial motivation of trying to explain something that sounds simple, but actually you realize, oh gosh, I'm gonna have to write an entire book to even get my own head around this rather than, you know, 'cause that was true for, well, when we wrote, it's actually a, Cloud Native Attitude, which was the book that we wrote together started off 10 years ago, was pretty much for the same, it was kicked off in the same way. We were, we were saying, well, what is cloud native? What, what are people doing it for, and why are they doing it this way? And quite often, and Building Green Software,the O'Reilly book, which is really germane to this, to this podcast, was again, the same thing. It's what is, what does the future look like for systems to be sustainable? How do we align, and make, what is the future gonna look like? And, where, and that's always seated in the past. What has been successful?How did we get here? Jamie Dobson: Absolutely. So you can't move into the future unless you understand your past. And I think the similarities between the Cloud Native Attitude and Visionaries and Rebels is the tone. So my book deals with horrible things, child poverty, exploitation of people, and the truth is that a reader will put up with that for maybe one paragraph.So if you want to, if you want to teach computing and how it can enslave the human race or not, or how it can liberate them and touch all of these really difficult themes, you've got to do it in a pretty lighthearted manner. And the reason people are saying, "oh, it's a page turner. it's entertaining, it's a bit of a rump,"it's because we focus on the characters and all the things that happens to them. And I think that started with a cloud-native attitude because unless you can speak quite lightheartedly, you so quickly get bogged down in concepts that even for people like us who work in computing and are passionate about computing, it's just extremely boring. And there are some fantastic books out there right now about artificial intelligence, but they're so dry that the message fails to land. And I think I was trying to avoid that. Anne Currie: And you know for, 'cause we wrote Cloud Native Attitude together. But it is, if these, books are ideally a form of leadership. When you write a book, you are either, you are kind of saying, look, this is what I want to happen in the future.You're trying to lead peo

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.Learn more about our people:Chris Adams: LinkedIn | GitHub | WebsiteJames Martin: LinkedIn | WebsiteFind out more about the GSF:The Green Software Foundation Website Sign up to the Green Software Foundation NewsletterNews:Environmental Footprint Calculator | Scaleway [14:19]AI on a diet: how to apply frugal AI standards? - Schneider Electric Blog [26:03] Frugal AI Challenge | Hugging Face [33:33]Greening digital companies: Monitoring emissions and climate commitments Resources:Why Cloud Zombies Are Destroying the Planet | Holly Cummins [14:47]European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) [21:22]EcoLogits [21:54]Empire of AI - Wikipedia [29:49]Hype, Sustainability, and the Price of the Bigger-is-Better Paradigm in AI | Sasha Luccioni et al. [30:38] Sam Altman (@sama) on X [31:58]Référentiel général d'écoconception de services numériques (RGESN) - 2024 [37:06] Frugal AI If you enjoyed this episode then please either:Follow, rate, and review on Apple PodcastsFollow and rate on SpotifyWatch our videos on The Green Software Foundation YouTube Channel!Connect with us on Twitter, Github and LinkedIn!TRANSCRIPT BELOW:James Martin: When I hear the term AI for Good, which we hear a lot of at the moment, I would say that I would challenge that and I would encourage people to challenge that too by saying "are sure this AI is for good? Are you sure this tech is for good? Are you sure that the good that it does, far outweighs the potential harm that it has?"Because it's not always the case. A lot of the AI for good examples see at the moment are just, they can't be backed with scientific data at all.And that comes back to another of my points. If you can't prove that it's for good, then it's not, and it's probably greenwashing.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 Environment Variables, where we bring you the latest news and updates from the Board of Sustainable Software Development. I'm your host, Chris Adams. Our guest today is James Martin, a content and communications expert who has spent years translating complex text strategies into compelling narratives that drive change.From leading communications with a special focus on sustainability at Scaleway, to founding BetterTech.blog, James has been at the forefront of making green tech more actionable and accessible. He's spoken at major climate and tech events, most recently ChangeNOW. He's written a comprehensive white paper on green IT, and played a key role in Gen AI Impact a French NGO working to measure the impact of AI. And also he's a Green Software Foundation champion.So, James, thank you so much for joining the podcast. Really lovely to see you again after we last crossed paths in, I guess Paris, I think. Maybe I've tried to introduce you a little bit, but I figure there's maybe some things you might wanna talk about as well. So, can I give you the floor to just like introduce yourself and, talk a little bit about yourself?James Martin: Yeah, thanks very much, Chris. First and foremost, I just wanted to say I'm really happy to, be on this podcast with you because, this podcast is one of the things that really got me excited, and it started me off on my green IT adventure. So, thanks to you and Anne for putting all, putting out all these amazing episodes.Basically what I'm speaking today in the name of BetterTech, which is my blog, which I founded 2018. So I've been a, I've been a journalist for most of my career. And, so for about 15 years I was writing for a French cultural magazine. I had a page in that two weeks. And I started off writing out, "here's a new iPhone, here's a new console." And after that I got a bit bored of just saying the same thing every time. So I was drawn towards more responsible topics, like how do you reduce your screen time, how do you protect your data?And also, of course, what is the impact of technology on the planet? So that started in that, in that magazine, and then I got so into it, i founded my own blog on the topic.And then that was pretty much when an opportunity came up, in 2020, 2021 to work at Scaleway. I thought that sounds really interesting because, that is a European cloud provider, so not American. And also they were already very, communicating a lot about the sustainable aspect of what they do. So, yeah, I was very happy to join them and lead their communications from 2021 with this huge focus sustainability.Chris Adams: Ah.James Martin: Yeah, that's how, that's basically where it started. At that time, Scaleway had its centers and one of them called DC five, which is one of the most sustainable Europe because it doesn't have air conditioning, so it uses a lot less energy. That's it. It has adiabatic cooling. So we focused a lot of communication efforts on that. But then after year or two, Scaleway decided to sell its data centers. I had to look at are the other ways I could talk about sustainability in the cloud? So from digging around into green IT, especially into some green Software Foundation resources,I basically understood that not just data centers, it's hardware and software. So I also, with a bit of help from one of a pivotal meeting, was meeting Neil Fryer from who the Green Software Foundation at a conference. I got him to come and speak at Scaleway to people like me were sort of concerned about the impact of tech. And then that led to the white paper that you mentioned that I erase in 2023, which is basic. It's basically how engineers can reduce the impact of of technology. So, and then that led to speaking opportunities and then to realize that, yeah, I'm not a, I'm not a developer. I'm not an engineer. I may be the first non-developer on this podcast. So I can't build Green Tech, but I can explain how it works and I think that's an important thing to be able to do, if we want to convince as many people as possible of how important this is, then it needs to be communicated properly.And, yeah, so that's what I've been doing ever since.Chris Adams: Okay, thanks. Okay, so I'm, I appreciate that you're coming here as not as a non, as someone who's not like a full-time techie who's like using GitHub on the daily and everything like that, because I think that means you, you get a bit of a chance to like see how normal people see this who aren't conversant in like object storage or block storage or stuff like that.So maybe we can talk a little bit about that then, because when people start to think about, say, the environmental footprint of digital services, right? It's often coming from a very low base. And it's like people might start thinking about like the carbon footprint of their emails, and that's like the thing they should be focusing on first.And like if you do have a bit of domain knowledge, you'll often realize that actually that's probably not where you'd start if you have a kind of more, more developed understanding of the problem. Now you've spent some of your time being this translator between techies and like people who are not full, you know, who, who aren't writing code and building applications all day long, for example.So maybe we could talk a little bit about like the misunderstandings people have when they come to this in the first place and how you might address some of this because this seems to be your day job and this might be something that could, that might help who are other techies realize how they might change the way they talk about this for other people to make a bit more accessible and intelligible.James Martin: Yes. So, thank you for mentioning day job first and foremost, because, so Scaleway was my former day job and I have another day job working for another french scale app. But here I'm very much speaking in the name of my blog. It's because I care so much about topics that I continue to talk about them, to write about them on the side because it's just, I just think something that needs to be done. So this is why today with my BetterTech hatChris Adams: Hat on. Yeah.James Martin: so yeah, just wanted to make that clear. The first thing that people do when people misunderstand stuff, the first thing I want to say is it's not their fault. Sometimes they are led down the wrong path. Like,  a few years ago, French environment Minister said people should stop trying to send so many funny email attachments.Chris Adams: Oh, really? James Martin: Like when you send a joking video to all your colleagues, you should stop doing that because it's not good for the planet. It honestly, the minister could say something that misguided because that's not where we, you and I know, not where the impact is. The impact is in the cloud.The impact is in hardware. So it is sort of, about the communication is repetition and I always start with, digital is 4% of global emissions, and 1% of that is data centers, 3% of that is hardware, and software is sort of all over the place. That's the thing I, the figure I use the most to get things started. I think the, there's number one misconception that people need to get their heads around is the people tend to think that tech is, immaterial. I

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. Learn more about our people:Chris Adams: LinkedIn | GitHub | WebsiteZachary Smith: LinkedIn | WebsiteMy Truong: LinkedIn | WebsiteFind out more about the GSF:The Green Software Foundation Website Sign up to the Green Software Foundation NewsletterResources:Hardware Standards Working Group | GSF [06:19]SSIA / Open19 V2 Specification [12:56]Enabling 1 MW IT racks and liquid cooling at OCP EMEA Summit | Google Cloud Blog [19:14] Project Mycelium Wiki | GSF [24:06]Green Software Foundation | Mycelium workshop EcoViser | Weatherford International [43:04]Cooling Environments » Open Compute Project [43:58]Rack & Power » Open Compute Project Sustainability » Open Compute Project 7x24 Exchange [44:58]OpenBMC [45:25]If you enjoyed this episode then please either:Follow, rate, and review on Apple PodcastsFollow and rate on SpotifyWatch our videos on The Green Software Foundation YouTube Channel!Connect with us on Twitter, Github and LinkedIn!TRANSCRIPT BELOW:Zachary Smith: We've successfully made data centers into cloud computing over the past 20 or 25 years, where most people who use and consume data centers never actually see them or touch them. And so it's out of sight, out of mind in terms of the impacts of the latest and greatest hardware or refresh. What happens to a 2-year-old Nvidia server when it goes to die? Does anybody really know Hello, and welcome to Environment Variables,Chris Adams: 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 Environment Variables, the podcast where we explore the latest in sustainable software development. I'm your host, Chris Adams. Since this podcast started in 2022, we've spoken a lot about green software, how to make code more efficient so it consumes fewer resources or runs on a wider range of hardware to avoid needless hardware upgrades, and so on.We've also covered how to deploy services into data centers where energy is the cleanest, or even when energy is the cleanest, by timing compute jobs to coincide with an abundance of clean energy on the grid. However, for many of these interventions to work, they rely on the next layer down from software,the hardware layer, to play along. And for that to work at scale, you really need standards. Earlier this year, the SSIA, the Sustainable and Scalable Infrastructure Alliance, joined the Green Software Foundation. So now there's a hardware standards working group for HSWG within the Green Software Foundation too.Today we're joined by two leaders in the field who are shaping the future of sustainable software. So, oops, sustainable hardware. We've got Zachary Smith formerly of Packet and Equinix, and My Truong from ZutaCore. We'll be discussing hardware efficiency, how it fits into the bigger sustainability picture, the role of the Open19 standard, and the challenges and opportunities of making data centers greener.So let's get started. So, Zachary Smith, you are alphabetically ahead of My Truong, Mr. Truong. So can I give you the floor first to introduce yourself and tell a little bit about yourself for the listeners?Zachary Smith: Sure. Thanks so much, Chris. It's a pleasure being here and getting to work with My on this podcast. As you mentioned, my name's Zachary Smith. I've been an entrepreneur, primarily in cloud computing for, I guess it's about 25 years now. I went to Juilliard. I studied music and ended up figuring that wasn't gonna pay my rent here in New York City and in the early two thousands joined a Linux-based hosting company. That really gave me just this full stack view on having to put together hardware. We had to build our own computers, ran data center space, oftentimes helped build some of the data centers, connect them all with networks, travel all around the world, setting that up for our customers. And so I feel really fortunate because I got to touch kind of all layers of the stack. My career evolved touch further into hardware. It just became a true passion about where we could connect software and hardware together through automation, through accessible interfaces, and other kinds of standardized protocols, and led me to start a company called Packet, where we did that across different architectures, X86 and ARM, which was really coming to the data center in the 2014/15 timeframe. That business Equinix, one of the world's largest data center operators. And at that point we really had a different viewpoint on how we could impact scale, with the sustainability groups within Equinix as one of the largest green power purchasers in the world, and start thinking more fundamentally about how we use hardware within data centers, how data centers could speak more or be accessible to software users which as we'll, unpack in this conversation, are pretty disparate types of users and don't often get to communicate in good ways. So, I've had the pleasure of being at operating companies. I now invest primarily businesses around the use of data centers and technology as well as circular models to improve efficiency and the sustainability of products.Chris Adams: Cool. Thank you Zachary. And, My, can I give you the floor as well to introduce yourself from what looks like your spaceship in California?My Truong: Thanks. Thanks, Chris. Yes. So pleasure being here as well. Yeah, My Truong, I'm the CTO at ZutaCore, a small two-phase liquid cooling organization, very focused on bringing sustainable liquid cooling to the marketplace. Was very fortunate to cross over with Zach at Packet and Equinix and have since taken my journey in a slightly different direction to liquid cooling. Super excited to join here. Come from, unfortunately I'm not a musician by a classical training. I am a double E by training. I'm joining here from California on the west coast of the Bay Area.Chris Adams: Cool. Thank you for that, My. Alright then. So, my name is Chris. If you're new to this podcast, I work in the Green Web Foundation, which is a small Dutch nonprofit focused on an entirely fossil free internet by 2030. And I'm also the co-chair of the policy working group within the Green Software Foundation.Everything that we talk about, we'll do our best to share links to in the show notes. And if there's any particular thing you heard us talking about that you're really interested that isn't in the show notes, please do get in touch with us because we want to help you in your quest to learn more about green software and now green hardware.Alright then looks like you folks are sitting comfortably. Shall we start?Zachary Smith: Let's do it.Chris Adams: All right then. Cool. Okay. To start things off, Zachary, I'll put this one to you first. Can you just give our listeners an overview of what a hardware standards working group actually does and why having standards with like data centers actually helps?I mean, you can assume that our listeners might know that there are web standards that make websites more accessible and easier to run on different devices, so there's a sustainability angle there, but a lot of our listeners might not know that much about data centers and might not know where standards would be helpful.So maybe you can start with maybe a concrete case of where this is actually useful in helping make any kind of change to the sustainability properties of maybe a data center or a facility.Zachary Smith: Yeah. That's great. Well, let me give my viewpoint on hardware standards and why they're so critical. We're really fortunate actually to enjoy a significant amount of standardization in consumer products, I would say. there's working groups, things like the USB Alliance, that have Really provided, just in recent times, for example, standardization, whether that's through market forces or regulation around something like USB C, right, which allowed manufacturers and accessories and cables and consumers to not have extra or throw away good devices because they didn't have the right cable to match the port.Right? And so beyond this interoperability aspect to make these products work better across an intricate supply chain and ecosystem, they also could provide real sustainability benefits in terms of just reuse. Okay. In data centers, amazing thing, being that we can unpack some of the complexities related to the supply chain. These are incredibly complex buildings full of very highly engineered systems that are changing at a relatively rapid pace. But the real issue from my standpoint is, we've successfully made data centers into cloud computing over the past 20 or 25 years, where most people who use and consume data centers never actually see them or touch them. And so it's out of sight, out of mind in terms of the impacts of the latest and greatest hardware or refresh. What happens to a 2-year-old, Nvidia server when it goes to die? Does anybody really know? You kind of know in your home or with your consumer electronics, and you have this real waste problem, so then you have to deal with it.You know not to put lithium ion batteries in the trash, so,you find the place to put them. But you know, when it's the internet and it's so far away, it's a little bit hazy for, I think most people to understand the kind of impact of hardware and the related techno

Host Anne Currie is Joined by the esteemed Charles Humble, a figure in the world of sustainable technology. Charles Humble is 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.Learn more about our people:Anne Currie: LinkedIn | WebsiteCharles Humble: LinkedIn | WebsiteFind out more about the GSF:The Green Software Foundation Website Sign up to the Green Software Foundation NewsletterNews:The Developer's Guide to Cloud Infrastructure, Efficiency and Sustainability | Charles Humble [01:13] Charles Humble on O'Riley [01:50] Building Green Software [Book] [02:09]Twofish Music [48:03]Resources:User Interface Design For Programmers – Joel Spolsky [12:03] Environment Variables Episode 100: TWiGS: Sustainable AI Progress w/ Holly Cummins [18:12] Green Software Maturity Matrix [19:09] Writing Greener Software Even When You Are Stuck On-Prem • Charles Humble • GOTO 2024 [23:42]Electricity Maps [23:57]Cloud Carbon Footprint [36:52] Software Carbon Intensity (SCI) Specification | GSF [37:06]ML.energy [38:31]Perseus (SOSP '24) - Zeus Project | Jae-Won Chung [41:26] If you enjoyed this episode then please either:Follow, rate, and review on Apple PodcastsFollow and rate on SpotifyWatch our videos on The Green Software Foundation YouTube Channel!Connect with us on Twitter, Github and LinkedIn!TRANSCRIPT BELOW:Charles Humble: In general, if you are working with vendors, whether they're AI vendors or whatever, it is entirely reasonable to go and say, "well, I want to know what your carbon story looks like." And if they won't tell you, go somewhere else. 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. Anne Currie: Hello and welcome to Environment Variables, where we bring you the latest news and updates from the world of sustainable software development. Today I'm your guest host Anne Currie, and we'll be zooming in on an increasingly important topic, cloud infrastructure, efficiency and sustainability.Using the cloud well is about making some really clever choices, really difficult choices upfront. And they have an enormous, those choices an enormous impact on our carbon footprint, but we often just don't make them. So our guest today is someone who's thought very deeply about this.So Charles Humble is a writer, podcaster, and former CTO who has spent the past decade helping technologists build better systems, both technically and ethically. He's the author of The Developer's Guide to Cloud Infrastructure, Efficiency and Sustainability, a book that breaks down how cloud choices intersects with environmental impacts and performance.So before we go on, Charles, please introduce yourself.Charles Humble: Thank you. Yes, so as you said, I'm Charles Humble. I work mainly as a consultant and also an author and a technologist. I have a, my own business is a company called Conissaunce, which I run. And I'm very excited to be here. I speak a lot at conferences, most recently, mainly about sustainability. I've written a bunch of stuff with O'Reilly, including a series of shortcut articles called Professional Skills for Software Engineers, and as you mentioned most recently, this ebook, which I think is why you've invited me on.Anne Currie: It is indeed. Yes. So, to introduce myself, my name is Anne Currie. I've been in the tech industry for pretty a long time. Pretty much the same as Charles, about 30 years. And I am one of the authors of O'Reilly's new book, building Green Software, which is entirely and completely aimed at the folks who will be listening to this podcast today.So if you haven't listened to it, if you haven't read it or listened to it because it is available in an audio version as well, then please do so, you'd enjoy it. So, let's get on with the questions that we want to ask about today. So, Charles, you've written this great ebook, which is also something everybody who's listening to the podcast should be reading.And we'll link to it in the show notes below. In fact, everything we'll be talking about today will be linked to in the show notes below. But let's start with one of the key insights from your book, which is that choices matter. Things like VM choices matter, but they're often overlooked when it comes to planning your cloud infrastructure.What did you learn about that? What do you feel about that, Charles? Charles Humble: it's such an interesting place to start. So I think, when I was thinking about this book and how I was putting it together, my kind of starting point was, I wanted like a really easy on-ramp for people. And that came from, you know, speaking a lot at conferences and through some of the consulting work I've done and having people come up to me and say, "well, I kind of want to do the right thing, but I'm not very clear what the right thing is." And I think one of the things that's happened, we've been very good about talking about some of the carbon aware competing stuff, you know, demand shifting and shaping and those sorts of things. But that's quite a, quite an ambitious place to start. And oftentimes there are so many kind of easier wins, I think. And I kind of feel like I want to get us talking a little bit more about some of the easy stuff. 'Cause it's stuff that we can just do. The other thing is, you know, human beings, we make assumptions and we learn things and then we don't go back and reexamine those things later on. So I've occasionally thought to myself, I ought to write a work called something like Things That Were True But Aren't Anymore or something like that because we all have these things. Like my mental model of how a CPU works until probably about two years ago is basically a Pentium two .And CPUs haven't looked like a Pentium two for a very long time, and I have a feeling I'm not the only one. So, you were specifically asking about like CPUs and VM choices, and I think a lot of the time, those of us, certainly those of us of a certain age, but I don't think it's just us, came through this era where Windows and Intel were totally dominant. And so we naturally default to well, "Intel will be fine"because it was right for a long time.Anne Currie: Yeah.Intel Charles Humble: was the right Anne Currie: Who could ever have imagined that Intel would lose the data center? It's Charles Humble: Absolutely it is extraordinary. I mean obviously they lost mobile mainly to ARM and that was very much a sort of power efficiency thing. Fair enough. But yes, the idea that they might be losing the data center or might have lost the data center is extraordinary. But you know, the reality is first of all, if you are thinking about running your workloads. So, AMD processors, more or less how a cross compatible of Intel wants. It's not totally true, but it kind of is. So they have an X86 compatible instruction set. So for the most part, your workloads that will run on Intel will run on AMD.But not only will they run on AMD, they will probably run on AMD better.Again, for the most part, there are places where Intel probably has an edge, I would think. If you're doing a lot of floating point maths, then, maybe they still have an edge. I'm not a hundred percent sure, but as a rule of thumb, AMD is going to be, you know, faster and cheaper. And the reason for that has a great deal to do with core density. So AMD has more cores per chip than Intel does, and what that means is you end up with more processing per server, which means you need fewer servers to run the same workload. I ran some tests for the ebook and that came out,so I had a 2000 VM instance and we had 11 AMD powered servers. So running, epic, the AMD Epic chips and we needed 17 Intel powered servers to do the same job. Right? So that's roughly 35% fewer servers. It's not, by the way, 35% less power use. It's actually about 29%, something like that, less power use 'cause the chips are quite power hungry, but still that's a big saving, right? And it's also, by the way, a cost saving as well. So the other part of this is, you know, it is probably about 13% cheaper to be running your workload on AMD than Intel. Now obviously your mileage may vary and you need to verify everything I'm saying.Don't just assume, "well, Charles Humble said it's true, so it must be." It'll be a foolish thing to do, but as a rule of fault, the chances are in most cases you're better off and I'll wager that you are a lot of the time when you are setting up your VMs on your cloud provider, your cloud providers probably default to Intel and you probably just think, "well, that'll be fine."Right?So kind of a case of trying to flip that script. So maybe you default to AMD, maybe you evaluate whether ARM processors will work. We are seeing another surge of ARM in datacenters. Though, as I said, that comes with some it. In mobile, the trade offs are pretty straightforward with ARM to anything else. In data centers it is a little bit more nuanced. But basically it's that, and I think it's, I think it's this thing of, as I say, of these assumptions that we've just built up over time that we don't, we're not very good at going back and reexamining our opinions or our assumptions. And then the other thing that I think feeds into this is we build layers of abstractions, right? That's what computer science does, and we get more and more abstracted away from w

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.Learn more about our people:Chris Skipper: LinkedIn | WebsiteThomas Lewis: LinkedIn | WebsiteSanjay Podder: LinkedIn | WebsiteFind out more about the GSF:The Green Software Foundation Website Sign up to the Green Software Foundation NewsletterResources:Green AI Committee [00:00]Green AI Committee Manifesto [03:43]SCI for AI Workshop [05:28]Software Carbon Intensity (SCI) Specification [05:34] Green Software for Practitioners (LFC131) - Linux Foundation [13:54]Events:Carbon-Aware IT: The New Standard for Sustainable Tech Infrastructure (May 5 at 6:00 pm CEST · Virtual) [15:53]Inside CO2.js - Measuring the Emissions of The Web (May 6 at 6:30 pm CEST · Hybrid · Karlsruhe, BW) [16:11]Monitoring for Software Environmental Sustainability (May 6 at 6:30 pm CEST · Virtual) [16:45]Green IO New York (May 14 - 15 · New York) [17:02]If you enjoyed this episode then please either:Follow, rate, and review on Apple PodcastsFollow and rate on SpotifyWatch our videos on The Green Software Foundation YouTube Channel!Connect with us on Twitter, Github and LinkedIn!TRANSCRIPT BELOW:​Chris Skipper: Welcome to Environment Variables, where we bring you the latest news from the world of sustainable software development. I'm the producer of this podcast, Chris Skipper, and today we are thrilled to bring you another episode of Backstage, where we dive into the stories, challenges, and triumphs of the people shaping the future of green software. In this episode, we're turning the spotlight on the Green AI Committee, a pivotal initiative approved by the Green Software Foundation in March, 2024. With the rapid rise of AI, this committee has been at the forefront of shaping how companies innovate sustainably while reducing AI's environmental impact . From driving policies and standards, to fostering collaborations and crafting new tools, the Green AI Committee is charting a path toward a more sustainable AI future. Joining us today are Thomas Lewis, the founder of the committee, along with co-chair Sanjay Podder.Together, they'll share insights on the committee's goals, their strategies for tackling AI's carbon footprint, and the critical role this initiative plays in ensuring AI development supports global net zero ambitions. And as always, everything we discuss today will be linked in the show notes below. So without further ado, let's dive into our conversation about the Green AI Committee.First, I'll let Thomas Lewis introduce himself.Thomas Lewis: Hi, I'm Thomas Lewis. I'm a green software developer advocate at Microsoft, and excited to be here. I also work in artificial intelligence, spatial computing, and I've recently been involved in becoming a book nerd again.Chris Skipper: My first question to Thomas was, what inspired the creation of the Green AI Committee and how does it aim to shape the GFS approach to ensuring AI innovation aligns with sustainability goals? Thomas Lewis: Yeah, so we noticed that we were getting a lot of inquiries. We were getting them from legislators and a lot of technologists. Everybody from, you know, people working at your, you know, typical enterprise to folks who were doing research at universities and learning institutions.And they were reaching out to try to get a better understanding of how the green software principles that we talk about and those practices applied to this growing impact of AI. It was not unusual to see on social media a lot of interest in this kind of intersection of green software or sustainability with artificial intelligence.And, you know, this kind of shaped the GSF's approach because in a way we take a slow, methodical approach to thinking about the challenges of green AI and we tend to bring in a lot of experts who have thought about this space from quite a few different viewpoints. And we don't just look at it in a binary way of good or bad.And I think a lot of times, especially online, it can be like, well, you know, AI is, you know, burning the planet down. And you know, and that the resources needed to run these AIs are significant, which is not untrue. And that's the thing I appreciate with the GSF is that you know, we look at those elephants in the room.But with acknowledging those challenges, we also look at AI to help support sustainability efforts by, again, looking at it from those different vectors and then thinking of a viewpoint and also backing it up with the appropriate tools, technologies, and education that may be needed.Chris Skipper: The committee's manifesto emphasizes focusing on reducing the environmental impact of AI. Could you elaborate on why this focus was chosen rather than areas like AI for sustainability or responsible AI?Thomas Lewis: That's a good question. We tend to look at things from a variety of vectors and don't necessarily limit ourselves if we think it is important to dig into these other areas. But one of the things I do like, about the GSF is that typically when we start a committee or start a project, we always start with a workshop.And what we do is we ask for a lot of experts to come to the, you know, virtual table, so to speak, and walk actually through it. So, everyone gets a voice and gets to put out an opinion and to brainstorm and think about these things. And these workshops are over multiple days. And so, typically the first day is kind of like just getting everything on the board.And then the, you know, second time that we get together is really about how to kind of say, "okay, how do we prioritize these? What do we think are the most important? What should we start on first? And then what are the things that, you know, we put on the backlog?" And then the third, you know, one is typically where we're really getting sort of precise about "here's where our focus is going to be." So the conversation is always very broad in the beginning, right? Because you have all of these people coming to the table to say what's important. But as we kind of go through that, so, after a lot of that discussion, we decide on a prioritized focus. But of course we'll come back to others as we iterate because there are gonna be opportunities where, hey, maybe it is more important that we focus on a certain thing.So, like, for example for the GSF, it is about building out the SCI for AI. So, if you're familiar with our Software Carbon Intensity spec, that now is a standard, that is one of, kind of the projects that came out of that workshop and that thinking, because, you know, first thing you kind of have to do if you wanna make a change in what you do is you have to measure it, right?You have to measure what your carbon intensity is, whether it's AI or gaming or blockchain or what have you. And so I think by having this process of doing these workshops that's really what gets us to our priority. So I don't think that there's always sort of a kind of a crisp thing of like, why we did this or not do this, or why we prioritize it a way.It's really that kind of collective coming together, which I think is what really makes the foundation very powerful because everyone has a voice in it.Chris Skipper: The committee recently responded to a bill drafted by US Senators to investigate AI's environmental impact. How do you see the role of the Green AI Committee in shaping public policy and regulations?Thomas Lewis: I've always seen the Green AI Committee's role in this as a trusted advisor, backed up with technical credibility and intellectual honesty. Our intent is not to rubber stamp legislation or just be another endorsement on a bill, but to review bills and papers that come to us with experts in this field and to call out things that we think are important to sustainability or also question things. What I really have appreciated is what comes to us is there has never been an intention for us just to say, "this is good" and give the check mark. But it really is, has been like, "hey, we want your feedback. We wanna understand how we can make these things better for our constituents."And the other thing is that the committee also works very closely with our own policy group within the GSF because many of the members, including myself, don't work with legislators and politicians normally. And so there's a vernacular to the things that they talk about and how they approach things.And so our policy group is also very helpful in this. So, you know, our committees aren't based on, "hey, everything related to AI will come through this committee." We have a lot of different groups, and those groups may be like the policy group, it may be the open source projects that are within the GSF and some of our education opportunities that are there.But yeah, I would say from my perspective the role is mostly as a trusted advisor. And I think that if that is how people reflected the relationship regarding policy and advocacy, I would think that we are doing a good thing.Chris Skipper: From the initial stages of founding the Green AI Committee to where it stands now, what have been the most valuable lessons learned that could guide other organizations aiming to promote sustainability in AI?Thomas Lewis: I would say, first take a thoughtful approach in how you wanna approach things. Not only is green software a significant amount of tech, people and communities, but AI builds on top of that and has its own things, and the innovation is happening

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. Learn more about our people:Chris Adams: LinkedIn | GitHub | WebsiteMax Schulze: LinkedIn | WebsiteFind out more about the GSF:The Green Software Foundation Website Sign up to the Green Software Foundation NewsletterResources:Energy Efficiency Directive [02:02]German Datacenter Association [13:47] Real Time Cloud | Green Software Foundation [22:10]Sustainable Digital Infrastructure Alliance [33:04]Shaping a Responsible Digital Future | Leitmotiv [33:12]If you enjoyed this episode then please either:Follow, rate, and review on Apple PodcastsFollow and rate on SpotifyWatch our videos on The Green Software Foundation YouTube Channel!Connect with us on Twitter, Github and LinkedIn!TRANSCRIPT BELOW:Max Schulze: The measurement piece is key. Having transparency and understanding always helps. What gets measured gets fixed. It's very simple, but the step that comes after that, I think we're currently jumping the gun on that because we haven't measured a lot of stuff. 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 edition 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're doing something a bit different today. Because a friend and frequent guest of the pod, Max Schulzer is actually turning up to Berlin in person where I'm recording today. So I figured it'd be nice to catch up with Max, see what he's up to, and yeah, just like catch up really.So Max, we've been on this podcast a few times together, but not everyone has listened to every single word we've ever shared. So maybe if I give you some space to introduce yourself, I'll do it myself and then we'll move from there. Okay. Sounds good. All right then Max, so what brings you to this here?Can you introduce yourself today? Yeah. Max Schulze: Yeah. I think the first question, why am I in Berlin? I think there's a lot of going on in Europe in terms of policies around tech. In the EU, there's the Cloud and AI Development Act. There's a lot of questions now about datacenters, and I think you and I can both be very grateful for the invention of AI because everything we ever talked about, now everybody's talking about 10x, which is quite nice.Like everybody's thinking about it now. Yep. My general introduction, my name is Max. For everybody who doesn't know me, I'm the founder of the SDIA, the Sustainable Digital Infrastructure Alliance. And in the past we've done a lot of research on software, on datacenters, on energy use, on efficiency, on philosophical questions around sustainability.I think the outcome that we generated that was probably the most well known is the Energy Efficiency Directive, which is forcing datacenters in Europe to be more transparent now. Unfortunately, the data will not be public, which is a loss. But at least a lot of digital infrastructure now needs to, Yeah,be more transparent on their resource use. And the other thing that I think we got quite well known for is our explanation model. The way we think about the connection between infrastructure, digital resources, which is a term that we came up with and how that all interrelates to software. Because there's this conception too that we are building datacenters for the sake of datacenters.But we are, of course, building them in response to software and software needs resources. And these resources need to be made somewhere. Chris Adams: Ah, I see. Max Schulze: And that's, I think what we were well known for. Chris Adams: Okay. Those two things I might jump into a little bit later on in a bit more detail.So, if you're new to this podcast, my name is Chris Adams. I am the policy chair in the Green Software Foundation's Policy Working Group, and I'm also the director of technology and policy in the confusingly, but similarly named Green Web Foundation. Alright. Max, you spoke about two things that, if I can, I'd like to go dive into in a little bit more detail.So, first of all, you spoke about this law called the Energy Efficiency Directive, which, as I understand it, essentially is intended to compel every datacenter above a certain size to start recording information, and in many ways it's like sustainability-adjacent information with the idea being that it should be published eventually.Could we just talk a little bit about that first and maybe some of your role there, and then we'll talk a little bit about the digital resource thing that you mentioned. Max Schulze: Yeah. I think on the Energy Efficiency Directive, even one step up, europe has this ambition to conserve resources at any time and point.Now, critical raw materials are also in that energy efficiency. Normally, actually, this law sets thresholds. Like it is supposed to say, "a building shall not consume more power than X." And with datacenters, what they realized, like, actually we can't set those thresholds because we don't know, like reliably how many resources have you consumed?So we can't say "this should be the limit." Therefore, the first step was to say, well, first of all, everybody needs to report into a register. And what's interesting about that, it's not just the number that in datacenter land everybody likes to talk about, which is PUE, power usage effectiveness. And so how much overhead do I generate with cooling and other things on top of the IT, but also that it for the first time has water in there.It has IT utilization ranges in there. It even has, which I think is very funny., The amount of traffic that goes in and out of a datacenter, which is a bit like, I don't know what we're trying to measure with this, but you know, sometimes you gotta leave the funny things in there to humor everybody. And it goes really far in terms of metrics on like really trying to see what resources go in a datacenter, how efficiently are there being used, and to a certain degree also what comes out of it. Maybe traffic. Yeah. Chris Adams: Ah, I see. Okay. Alright, so it's basically, essentially trying to bring the datacenter industry in line with some of other sectors where they already have this notion of, okay, we know they should be this efficient, and like we've had a lack of information in the datacenter industry, which made it difficult to do that.Now I'm speaking to you in Berlin, and I don't normally sound like I'm in Berlin, but I am in Berlin, and you definitely sound like you are from Germany, even though you're not necessarily living in Germany. Max Schulze: I'm German. Chris Adams: Oh yeah. Maybe it might be worth just briefly touching on how this law kind of manifests in various countries, because I know that like this might be a bit inside baseball, but I've learned from you that Germany was one of the countries that was really pushing quite hard for this energy efficiency law in the first place, and they were one of the first countries who actually kinda write into their own national law.Maybe we could touch a little bit on that before we start talking about world of digital resources and things like that. Max Schulze: Yeah, I think even funnier, and then you always know in the Europe that a certain country's really interested in something, they actually implemented it before the directive even was finalized.So for everybody who doesn't know European policies, so the EU makes directives and then every country actually has to, it's called transpose it, into national law. So just because the EU, it's a very confusing thing, makes something, doesn't mean it's law. It just means that the countries should now implement it, but they don't have to and they can still change it.So what Germany, for example, did, in the directive it's not mandatory to have heat recovery. So we're using the waste heat that comes out of the datacenter. But also the EU did not set release thresholds. But of course Germany was like, "no, we have to be harsher than this." So they actually said, for datacenters above a certain size, that needs to be powered by renewable energy, you need to have heat recovery,it's mandatory for a certain size. And of course the industry is not pleased. So I think we will see a re revision of this, but it was a very ambitious, very strong, "let's manage how they build these things."Chris Adams: I see. Okay. There is a, I think, is there a German phrase? Trust is nice, control is better.Yes. Well, something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. So if I'm just gonna put my program ahead on, so when I think of a directive, it's a little bit like maybe an abstract class, right? Yes. And then if I'm Germany, I'm making a kind of concrete, I've implemented that class in my German law basically.Yes. Max Schulze: Interfaces and implementations. Okay. Chris Adams: Alright. You've explained it into nerd for me. That makes a bit more sense. Thank you for that. Alright, so that's the ED, you kind of, you essentially were there to, to use another Ge

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.Learn more about our people:Chris Adams: LinkedIn | GitHub | WebsiteKarl Rabe: LinkedIn | WebsiteFind out more about the GSF:The Green Software Foundation Website Sign up to the Green Software Foundation NewsletterResources:Windcloud [02:31]Open Compute Project [03:36]Software Carbon Intensity (SCI) Specification [35:47] Sustainability » Open Compute Project [38:48]Swiss Data Center Association [39:07]Solar Microgrids for Data Centers [47:24]How to green the world's deserts and reverse climate change | Allan Savory [53:39]Wooden DataCenter - YouTube [55:33] If you enjoyed this episode then please either:Follow, rate, and review on Apple PodcastsFollow and rate on SpotifyWatch our videos on The Green Software Foundation YouTube Channel!Connect with us on Twitter, Github and LinkedIn!TRANSCRIPT BELOW:Karl Rabe: That's a perfect analogy, having like a good neighbor approach saying, "look, we are here now, we look ugly, we always box, you know, but we help, you know, powering your homes, we reduce the cost of the energy transition, and we also heat your homes." 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 edition 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. How do you green the bits of a computing system that you can't normally control with software? We've discussed before that one option that you can do might be to shift where you run computing jobs from one part of the world to another part of the world where the energy is greener.And we've spoken about how this is essentially a way to run the same code, doing the same thing, but with a lower carbon footprint. But even if you have two data centers with the same efficiency on the same grid, one can still be greener than the other simply because of the energy gone into making the data center in the first place and the materials used. So does this make a meaningful difference though, and can it make a meaningful difference? I didn't know this. So I asked Karl Rabe the founder of Wooden Data Center and Windcloud, and now increasingly involved in the Open Compute Project, to come on and help me navigate these questions as he is the first person who turned me onto the idea that there are all these options available to green the shell, the stuff around the servers that we have that also has an impact on the software we run.Karl, thank you so much for joining me. Can I just give you the floor to introduce yourself before we start?Karl Rabe: Thanks, Chris. This is an absolute honor and I'll have to admit, you know, you're a big part on my carbon aware journey, and so I'm very glad that we finally get to speak. I'm Karl, based out of North Germany. We initially, I always say I had a one proper job. I'm a technical engineer by training,and then I moved into the data. Then I fell into the data center business, we can touch on it a little later, which was Windcloud, which remains, which was data center thought from the energy perspective, which is a very important idea in 2025. But we pivoted about four years ago to Wooden Data Center, probably can touch upon those a little later, in also realizing there is this supply chain component to the data center.And there are also tools to action against those. And I'm learning and supporting and providing, you know, as a co-lead in the data center facilities group of the OCP where we work, you know, with the biggest organizations directly in order to shape and define the latest trends in the data centerand especially navigating the AI buildout in somewhat of a, yeah, sustainable way.Chris Adams: Okay, cool. And when you say OCP, you're referring to the Open Compute Project, the kind of project with Microsoft, Meta, various other companies, designing essentially open source server designs, right?Karl Rabe: Correct. That is the, initially started by then Facebook now Meta, in order yeah, to create or to cut out waste on the server design. It meanwhile involves and grew into cooling environments, data center design, chiplet design. It's a whole range of initiatives.Very interesting to look into. And, happy to talk about some of those projects. Yeah.Chris Adams: All right, thanks Karl. So if you are new to this podcast, my name is Chris Adams. I am the director of technology and policy at the Green Web Foundation, a small Dutch non-profit focused on a fossil free internet by 2030. And I also work with the Green Software Foundation, the larger industry body, in their policy working group.And we are gonna talk about various projects and we'll add as many all the show notes to all the links we can think of as we discuss. So if there's any particular things that caught your eye, like the OCP or Wooden Data Centers, if you follow the link to this website, to this podcast's website, you'll see all the links there.Alright then Karl, are you sitting comfortably?Karl Rabe: I am sitting very well. Yeah.Chris Adams: Good stuff. Alright, then I guess we can start. So maybe I should ask you, where are you calling me from today, actually?Karl Rabe: I'm calling you today from the west coast of the North Sea Shore in northern Germany. We are not a typical data center region for Germany, per se. We, which is Frankfurt, you know, 'cause of the big internet hub there. But we are actually located right within a wind farm.You know, in my home, which is, initially was, you know, home growing up and turned to my home office and eventually to what was somewhat considered the international headquarter of Wooden Data Center. Yeah, and we're very close to the North Sea and we have a lot of renewable power around.Chris Adams: Oh, I see. Okay. So near the north of Germany, near Denmark, where Denmark has loads of wind, you've got the similar thing where, okay. SoKarl Rabe: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.Chris Adams: Oh, I see. I get you. So, ah, alright. For people who are not familiar with the geography of like Europe, or Northern Europe in particular, the north part of Germany has loads of wind turbines and loads of wind energy, but lots of the power gets used in other parts of it.So, Karl is in the windiest part of Germany, basically.Karl Rabe: That's correct, yeah. We basically have offshore conditions on shore. And it's a community owned wind farm, which is also a special setup, which is very easy to get, you know, the people's acceptance. We have about a megawatt per inhabitant of this small community.And so this is becoming, you know, the biggest, yeah, economic factor of the small community.Chris Adams: Wow. A megawatt per, okay, so just for context, for people who are not familiar with megawatts and kilowatts, the typical house might use what may be about half a kilowatt of constant draw on average over the year. So that's a lot of power per person for that space. So that's a, you're in a place of power abundance compared to the scenario people are wondering where's the power gonna be coming from? Wow, I did not know that.Karl Rabe: No, that, is, yeah, that is the, so it's a bit of that background, so to speak. We are now trying to go from 300 megawatts to 400 megawatts. There has been, you know, Germany's pushing for more renewable energy, and we have still some spots that we can, under new regulations now, build out.And the goal or the big dream of our organization, the company running this wind farm for us is trying to produce a billion kilowatt hours per year. And so we're now slightly below that and we're trying to, Yeah, add another, yeah. For, we need to reach probably another 25 percent more production. And, it is, so to speak, you are absolutely right, we are in an energy abundance and that was one of the prerequisites for Windcloud. 'Cause you know, the easiest innovations, is one and one is two. And so we have in, we had energy, I was aware that we also had fiber infrastructure in the north to run those set wind, parts.So we said, why don't we bring a load to those? That was the initial start of Windcloud.Chris Adams: Okay, so maybe we should talk a little bit about that. I hadn't realized the connection between the geography and the fact that you're literally in the middle of a wind farm, which is why this came together. Okay. So, the, so as I understand it, and now this makes sense why you are so involved in Windcloud.So for context, my understanding of Windcloud is it's essentially a company where rather than like connecting data centers via big power lines to like somewhere else where the actual generation is miles away from where the data centers are, the ideals instead was to actually put the data centers literally inside the towers of the wind turbines themselves.So you don't need to have any cables and, well you've obviously got green energy because it's

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.Learn more about our people:Chris Adams: LinkedIn | GitHub | WebsiteJames Hall: LinkedIn Greenpixie: WebsiteFind out more about the GSF:The Green Software Foundation Website Sign up to the Green Software Foundation NewsletterNews:The intersection of FinOps and cloud sustainability [16:01]What is FOCUS? Understand the FinOps Open Cost and Usage Specification [22:15]April 2024 Summit: Google Cloud Next Recap, Multi-cloud Billing with FOCUS, FinOps X Updates [31:31]Resources:Cloud Carbon Footprint [00:46]Greenops - Wikipedia [02:18]Software Carbon Intensity (SCI) Specification [05:12]GHG Protocol [05:20]Energy Scores for AI Models | Hugging Face [44:30]What is GreenOps - Newsletter | Greenpixie [44:42]Making Cloud Sustainability Actionable with FinOps Fueling Sustainability Goals at Mastercard in Every Stage of FinOps If you enjoyed this episode then please either:Follow, rate, and review on Apple PodcastsFollow and rate on SpotifyWatch our videos on The Green Software Foundation YouTube Channel!Connect with us on Twitter, Github and LinkedIn!TRANSCRIPT BELOW:James Hall: We want get the carbon data in front of the right people so they can put climate impact as part of the decision making process. Because ultimately, data in and of itself is a catalyst for change. 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 Environment Variables where we explore the developing world of sustainable software development. We kicked off this podcast more than two years ago with a discussion about cloud carbon calculators and the open source tool, Cloud Carbon Footprint, and Amazon's cloud carbon calculator.And since then, the term GreenOps has become a term of art in cloud computing circles when we talk about reducing the environmental impact of cloud computing. But what is GreenOps in the first place? With me today is James Hall, the head of GreenOps at Greenpixie, the cloud computing startup, cloud carbon computing startup,to help me shed some light on what this term actually means and what it's like to use GreenOps in the trenches. James, we have spoken about this episode as a bit of a intro and I'm wondering if I can ask you a little bit about where this term came from in the first place and how you ended up as the def facto head of GreenOps in your current gig.Because I've never spoken to a head of GreenOps before, so yeah, maybe I should ask you that.James Hall: Yeah, well, I've been with Greenpixie right from the start, and we weren't really using the term GreenOps when we originally started. It was cloud sustainability. It was about, you know, changing regions to optimize cloud and right sizing. We didn't know about the FinOps industry either. When we first started, we just knew there was a cloud waste problem and we wanted to do something about it.You know, luckily when it comes to cloud, there is a big overlap between what saves costs and what saves, what saves carbon. But I think the term GreenOps has existed before we started in the industry. I think it, yeah, actually originally, if you go to Wikipedia, GreenOps, it's actually to do with arthropods and Trilobites from a couple million years ago, funnily enough, I'm not sure when it started becoming, you know, green operations.But, yeah, it originally had a connotation of like data centers and IT and devices and I think Cloud GreenOps, where Greenpixie specializes, is more of a recent thing because, you know, it used to be about, yeah, well it is about how do you get the right data in front of the right people so they can start making better decisions, ultimately.And that's kind of what GreenOps means to me. So Greenpixie are a GreenOps data company. We're not here to make decisions for you. We are not a consultancy. We want get the carbon data in front of the right people so they can put climate impact as part of the decision making process. Because ultimately, data in and of itself is a catalyst for change.You know, whether you use this data to reduce carbon or you choose to ignore it, you know, that's up to the organization. But it's all about being more informed, ignoring or, you know, changing your strategy around the carbon data.Chris Adams: Cool. Thank you for that, James. You mentioning Wikipedia and Greenops being all about Trilobites and Arthropods, it makes me realize we definitely should add that to the show notes and that's the thing I'll quickly just do because I forgot to just do the usual intro folks. Yeah, my name's Chris Adams.I am one of the policy director, technology and policy director at the Green Web Foundation, and I'm also the chair of the policy working group inside the Green Software Foundation. All the things that James and I'll be talking about, we'll do our best to judiciously add show notes so you can, you too can look up the origins of, well, the etymology of GreenOps and find out all about arthropods and trilobites and other.And probably a lot more cloud computing as well actually. Okay. Thank you for that James. So you spoke a little and you did a really nice job of actually introducing what Greenpixie does. 'Cause that was something I should have asked you earlier as well. So I have some experience using these tools, like Cloud Carbon Footprint and so on to estimate the environmental impact of digital services. Right. And a lot of the time these things use billing data. So there are tools out there that do already do this stuff. But one thing that I saw that sets Greenpixie apart from some other tools as well, was the actual, the certification process, the fact that you folks have, I think, an ISO 14064 certification.Now, not all of us read over ISO standards for fun, so can you maybe explain why that matters and what that actually, what that changes at all, or even what that certification means? 'Cause, It sounds kind of impressive and exciting, but I'm not quite sure, and I know there are other standards floating around, like the Software Carbon Intensity standard, for example.Like yeah, maybe you could just provide an intro, then see how that might be different, for example.James Hall: Yeah, so ISO 14064 is a kind of set of standards and instructions on how to calculate a carbon number, essentially based on the Greenhouse Gas Protocol. So the process of getting that verification is, you know, you have official auditors who are like certified to give out these certifications, and ultimately they go through all your processes, all your sources, all the inputs of your data, and kind of verify that the outputs and the inputsmake sense. You know, do they align with what the Greenhouse Gas Protocol tells you to do? And, you know, it's quite a, it's a year long process as they get to know absolutely everything about your business and processes, you really gotta show them under the hood. But from a customer perspective, it means you know, that it proves thatthe methodology you're using is very rigorous and it gives them confidence that they can use yours. I think if a company that produces carbon data has an ISO badge, then you can probably be sure that when you put this data in your ESG reports or use it to make decisions, the auditors will also agree with it.'Cause the auditors on the other side, you know, your assurers or from EY and PWC, they'll be using the same set of guidance basically. So it's kind of like getting ahead of the auditing process in the same way, like a security ISO would mean the security that the chief security officer that would need to, you know, check a new vendor that they're about to procure from.If you've got the ISO already, you know they meet our standards for security, it saves me a job having to go and look through every single data processing agreement that they have.Chris Adams: Gotcha. Okay. So there's a few different ways that you can kind of establish trust. And so one of the options is have everything entirely open, like say Cloud Carbon Footprint or OpenCost has a bunch of stuff in the open. There's also various other approaches, like we maintain a library called CO2.js, where we try to share our methodologies there and then one of the other options is certification. That's another source of trust. I've gotta ask, is this common? Are there other tools that have this? 'Cause when I think about some of the big cloud calculators, do you know if they have this, let's say I'm using say, a very, one of the big three cloud providers.Do these have, like today, do you know if they actually have the same certification or is that a thing I should be looking for or I should be asking about if I'm relying on the numbers that I'm seeing from our providers like this.James Hall: Yeah, they actually don't. Well, technically, Azure. Azure's tool did get one in 2020, but you need to get them renewed and reordered as part of the process. So that one's kind of becoming invalid. And I'm not sure AWS or Google Cloud have actually tried, to be honest, but it's quite a funny thought that, you know, it's arguably because this ISO the, data we give you on GCP and AWS is more accur

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.Learn more about our people:Anne Currie: LinkedIn | WebsiteChristopher Liljenstolpe: LinkedIn | WebsiteFind out more about the GSF:The Green Software Foundation Website Sign up to the Green Software Foundation NewsletterResources:AI’s Growing Energy Appetite – The Need for Transparency [05:24]How DeepSeek erased Silicon Valley's AI lead and wiped $1 trillion from U.S. markets | Fortune Asia [17:35]The SMR Gamble: Betting on Nuclear to Fuel the Data Center Boom [22:53]AI’s Growing Footprint: The Supply Chain Cost of Big Tech Events:Webinar: Data-driven grid decarbonization | Electricity Maps - March 19 at 5:00 PM CET, VirtualCloud Optimization 2025 – FinOps, GreenOps & AI-Driven Efficiency - March 20 at 4:00 PM GMT, Amsterdam Code Green London March Meetup (Community Organised Event) - March 20 at 6:30 PM GMT, LondonGreen Software Ireland | Meetup - March 26 at 8:00 PM GMT, VirtualIf you enjoyed this episode then please either:Follow, rate, and review on Apple PodcastsFollow and rate on SpotifyWatch our videos on The Green Software Foundation YouTube Channel!Connect with us on Twitter, Github and LinkedIn!TRNSCRIPT BELOW:Christopher Liljenstolpe: The US grid's gonna be capped by 2031. We will be out of power in the United States by 2031. Europe will be out first. So something has to give, we have to become more efficient with the way we utilize these resources, the algorithms we build. 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. Anne Currie: Hello, and welcome to This Week in Software, where we bring you the latest news and insights from the world of sustainable software. This week I'm your guest host Anne Curry. As you know, I'm quite often your guest host, so you're not hearing the dult tones of the usual host, Chris Adams. today we'll be talking to Chris Liljenstolpe.Christopher Liljenstolpe, a leading expert in data center architecture and sustainability at Cisco Networks. Christopher is also the father of Project Calico and co-founder of Tigera, and he's a super expert in cloud infrastructure in green computing. But before I introduce him, I'm going to make it clear I've known Chris for years because he, and he's worked very closely with my husband, so we know each other very well.So that might explain why we seem like we know each other quite well. Who knows. What I do know from Chris is that it's impossible to say what we'll be talking about today. We will go all over the place. But Chris, do you wanna introduce yourself?Christopher Liljenstolpe: We might even cover the topic at hand, although that is an unlikely outcome. But who knows? That might be a first. That would be a first, but it might be an outcome. Anne Currie: So introduce yourself. Introduce yourself.Christopher Liljenstolpe: Sure. So, as Anne said, my name's Christopher Liljenstolpe. I am currently senior director for data Center Architecture, and sustainability here at Cisco, which means, once again, I failed to duck. So I'm the poor sod who's gotten the job of trying to square an interesting circle, which is, how do we build sustainable data centers, and what does a sustainable data center look like?At the same time, dealing with this oncoming light at the end of the tunnel that is certainly not sunshine and blue birds, but is a locomotive called AI. And it's bringing with it gigawatt data centers. So, you know, put that in perspective. Mintel, two years ago we were talking about a high power data centermight be a 90 kilowatt rack data center, or a 100 kilowatt rack data center, or a 60 kilowatt rack data center. And about two years ago we went to, okay, it might be 150 kilowatt rack data center, and that was up from 30 kilowatts from years ago. Took a very long time to get to 30 kilowatts. That was good. From two years ago to nine months ago.Nine months ago it went from 150 kilowatts to 250 kilowatts. So it took us decades to get from two kilowatts to 90 kilowatts to 150 kilowatts. And then in a year we went from 150 to 250, maybe 350. Jensen last week just took us to 600 kilowatts a rack. So yeah, that light at the end of the tunnel is not sunshine at the end of the tunnel.So yeah, how do we do sustainable data centers when you've got racks that need nuclear power plants that need strapped into each and every rack? So, you know, I'm the one who gets to figure out, you know, what does a gigawatt data center look like and how do you make it sustainable? So that's my day job.And then, and this really becomes a system of systems problem, which is usually what I end up doing throughout most of my career. Put the Lego blocks together, build system of systems, and then figure out what Lego blocks are missing and what we need to build. So, I did that with Anne's husband on a slightly different space, which was how do you build very scalable networks with millions of endpoints for Kubernetes?And now I'm doing this for data center infrastructure. Anne Currie: Which at least is absolutely fascinating. So for listeners, a bit background on me. I'm one of the authors of O'Reilly's new book, Building Green Software. I'm also the CEO of a learning and development company Strategically Green with the husband who used to work with Chris. So, in Building Green Software, Chris was a major contributor to the networking chapter.So if you are interested in some of the background in this, and the networking chapter is very high level, you don't need to know any super amazing stuff about it, it'll ramp you up on the basics of networking. So take a, have a look, have a read of that. If you want a kind of, a little bit of a lightweight background to what we'll be talking about today.But actually what we're talking about today is not networking. It is, it was a part of, it is obviously at a key part of any data center, but that's not really where your focus is on the moment. It sounds like, more like energy is what you are caring about at the moment with DCs. Is that true or both? It'll always be both, but... Christopher Liljenstolpe: It is, it's both. Energy starts behaving a bit like networking a bit at this level. And it's getting the energy and getting the energy out as well. The cooling is actually a real interesting part of it, butwe really start thinking about the energy as an energy network. You almost have to, when we start thinking about energy flows this size, and controlling them and managing them.But, then there's other aspects to this as well. Some of the things that are driving this insane, I'll be right out and say it, this insane per rack density. Why do we need 600 kilowatt racks? Do we need 600 kilowatt racks? But let's assume we do need them. Why do we need them? We need to pack as many GPUs as closely together as possible.That means that we need, and why do we need to do that? We need to get them as closest together as possible because we want them to be network close for very high speed so that they, we have a very high performance cluster or closely bound cluster so that you get your ChatGPT answers very quickly,and they don't hallucinate. So that means putting lots of GPUs and a very high bandwidth memory very close to one another. And when you do that in networking, you want that to be in copper and you want that to be a very specific kind of networking that really ends up using a whole lot of energy unless you pack it very closely together.So that 600 kilowatts is actually the low power variant. If we stretched further out, it would be by another order of magnitude, because we'd have to go into fiber. So we pack it very close. And that means we end up packing a lot of stuff very closely together that drives a lot of power into one rack, and it takes a lot of power to get the heat back out of it again.So it would be worse if we stretched it further out, but it's a networking, it's partially a networking thing that's driving this, actually. So is there one of the things, levers we can try and pull, is there a better way of doing this networking to cluster these things tighter together? So it always comes back to the network, one way or the other. Anne Currie: It does indeed always come. So although I live in a networking household, this I'm not so familiar with it, I don't know how this works. Is this that the GPUs have to talk together very fast, so there's almost no transit time elapsed, transit time in messages between the machines.Is that why the networking is so important? Christopher Liljenstolpe: You wanna get as many GPUs talking as closely together as possible. More specifically GPUs and their high bandwidth memory. So the HBM stacks, the high bandwidth memory stacks and the GPUs. The minute that you have, the way, and one good question, if this isn't a good architecture or not.There are basically in a aI infrastructure, there's three networks that tie the infrastructure together. This what's called the scale up Network, which is the very high speed network that stitches, some number of GPUs together, and that's on the order of, today, anywhere from 3.6 terabits per second, upwards to what's coming down the road,about 10 terabits a second of what's called non-blocking traffic network between the GPUs in a scale up cluster. And tha

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. Learn more about our people:Chris Skipper: LinkedIn | WebsiteFranziska Warncke: LinkedInLiya Mathew: LinkedInFind out more about the GSF:The Green Software Foundation Website Sign up to the Green Software Foundation NewsletterResources:Green Software Patterns | GSF [00:23]GitHub - Green Software Patterns | GSF [ 05:42] If you enjoyed this episode then please either:Follow, rate, and review on Apple PodcastsFollow and rate on SpotifyWatch our videos on The Green Software Foundation YouTube Channel!Connect with us on Twitter, Github and LinkedIn!TRANSCRIPT BELOW:Chris Skipper: Welcome to Environment Variables, where we bring you the latest news from the world of sustainable software development. I am the producer of the show, Chris Skipper, and today we're excited to bring you another episode of Backstage, where we uncover the stories, challenges, and innovations driving the future of green software.In this episode, we're diving into the Green Software Patterns Project, an open source initiative designed to curate and share best practices for reducing software emissions.The project provides a structured approach for software practitioners to discover, contribute, and apply vendor-neutral green software patterns that can make a tangible impact on sustainability. Joining us today are Franziska Warncke and Liya Mathew, the project leads for the Green Software Patterns Initiative.They'll walk us through how the project works, its role in advancing sustainable software development, and what the future holds for the Green Software Patterns. Before we get started, a quick reminder that everything we discuss in this episode will be linked in the show notes below. So without further ado, let's dive into our first question about the Green Software Patterns project. My first question is for Liya. The project is designed to help software practitioners reduce emissions in their applications.What are some real world examples of how these patterns have been successfully applied to lower carbon footprints?Liya Mathew: Thanks for the question, and yes, I am pretty sure that there are a lot of organizations as well as individuals who have greatly benefited from this project. A key factor behind the success of this project is the impact that these small actions can have on longer runs. For example, AVEVA has been an excellent case of an organization that embraced these patterns.They created their own scoring system based on Patterns which help them measure and improve their software sustainability. Similarly, MasterCard has also adopted and used these patterns effectively. What's truly inspiring is that both AVEVA and MasterCard were willing to share their learnings with the GSF and the open source community as well.Their contributions will help others learn and benefit from their experiences, fostering a collaborative environment where everyone can work towards a more sustainable software.Chris Skipper: Green software patterns must balance general applicability with technical specificity. How do you ensure that these patterns remain actionable and practical across different industries, technologies and software architectures?Liya Mathew: One of the core and most useful features of patterns is the ability to correlate the software carbon intensity specification. Think of it as a bridge that connects learning and measurement. When we look through existing catalog of patterns, one essential thing that stands out is their adaptability.Many of these patterns not only align with sustainability, but also coincide with security and reliability best practices. The beauty of this approach is that we don't need to completely rewrite our software architecture to make it more sustainable. Small actions like catching static data or providing a dark mode can make significant difference.These are simple, yet effective steps that can lead us a long way towards sustainability. Also, we are nearing the graduation of Patterns V1. This milestone marks a significant achievement and we are already looking ahead to the next exciting phase: Patterns V2. In Patterns V2, we are focusing on persona-based and behavioral patterns, which will bring even more tailored and impactful solutions to our community.These new patterns will help address specific needs and behaviors, making our tools even more adaptable and effective.Chris Skipper: The review and approval process for new patterns involves multiple stages, including subject matter expert validation and team consensus. Could you walk us through the workflow for submitting and reviewing patterns?Liya Mathew: Sure. The review and approval process for new patterns involve multiple stages, ensuring that each pattern meets a standard before integration. Initially, when a new pattern is submitted, it undergoes an initial review by our initial reviewers. During this stage, reviewers check if the pattern aligns with the GSF's mission of reducing software emissions, follows the GSF Pattern template, and adheres to proper formatting rules. They also ensure that there is enough detail for the subject matter expert to evaluate the pattern. If any issue arises, the reviewer provides clear and constructive feedback directly in the pull request, and the submitter updates a pattern accordingly.Once the pattern passes the initial review, it is assigned to an appropriate SME for deeper technical review, which should take no more than a week, barring any lengthy feedback cycles. The SME checks for duplicate patterns validates the content as assesses efficiency and accuracy of the pattern in reducing software remission.It also ensures that the pattern's level of depth is appropriate. If any areas are missing or incomplete, the SME provides feedback in the pull request. If the patterns meet all the criteria, SME will then remove the SME review label and adds a team consensus label and assigns this pull request back to the initial reviewer.Then the Principles and Patterns Working Group has two weeks to comment or object to the pattern, requiring a team consensus before the PR can be approved and merged in the development branch. Thus the raw process ensures that each pattern is well vetted and aligned with our goals.Chris Skipper: For listeners who want to start using green software patterns in their projects, what's the best way to get involved, access the catalog, or submit a new pattern?Liya Mathew: All the contributions are made via GitHub pull requests. You can start by submitting a pull request on our repository. Additionally, we would love to connect with everyone interested in contributing. Feel free to reach out to us on LinkedIn or any social media handles and express your interest in joining our project's weekly calls.Also, check if your organization is a member of the Green Software Foundation. We warmly welcome contributions in any capacity. As mentioned earlier, we are setting our sights on a very ambitious goal for this project, and your involvement would be invaluable.Chris Skipper: Thanks to Liya for those great answers. Next, we had some questions for Franziska. The Green Software Patterns project provides a structured open source database of curated software patterns that help reduce software emissions. Could you give us an overview of how the project started and its core mission? Franziska Warncke: Great question. The Green Software Patterns project emerged from a growing recommendation of the environmental impact of software and the urgent need for sustainable software engineering practices. As we've seen the tech industry expand, it became clear that while hardware efficiency has been a focal point for sustainability, software optimization was often overlooked. A group of dedicated professionals began investigating existing documentation, including resources like the AWS Well-Architected Framework, and this exploration laid to groundwork for the project. This allows us to create a structured approach to the curating of the patterns that can help reduce software emissions.We developed a template that outlines how each pattern should be presented, ensuring clarity and consistency. Additionally, we categorize these patterns into the three main areas, cloud, web, and AI. Chris Skipper: Building an open source knowledge base and ensuring it remains useful, requires careful curation and validation. What are some of the biggest challenges your team has faced in developing and maintaining the green software patterns database? Franziska Warncke: Building and maintaining an open source knowledge base like the Green Software Patterns database, comes with its own set of challenges. One of the biggest hurdles we've encountered is resource constraints. As an open source project, we often operate with limited time personnel, which makes it really, really difficult to prioritize certain tasks over others.Despite this challenge, we are committed to continuous improvement, collaboration, and community engagement to ensure that the Green Software Patterns database remains a valuable resource for developers looking to adopt more sustainable practices.Chris Skipper: Looking ahead, what are some upcoming initiatives for the project? Are there any plans to expand the pattern library or introduce new methodologies for evaluating and implementing patterns? Franziska Warncke: Yes, we have some exciting initiatives on the horizon. So one of our m

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. Learn more about our people:Chris Adams: LinkedIn | GitHub | WebsiteHolly Cummins: LinkedIn | GitHub | WebsiteFind out more about the GSF:The Green Software Foundation Website Sign up to the Green Software Foundation NewsletterNews:AI Action Summit: Two major AI initiatives launched | Computer Weekly [40:20]Microsoft reportedly cancels US data center leases amid oversupply concerns [44:31]Events:Data-driven grid decarbonization - Webinar | March 19, 2025The First Eco-Label for Sustainable Software - Frankfurt am Main | March 27, 2025 Resources:LightSwitchOps Why Cloud Zombies Are Destroying the Planet and How You Can Stop Them | Holly CumminsSimon Willison’s Weblog [32:56]The GoalIf you enjoyed this episode then please either:Follow, rate, and review on Apple PodcastsFollow and rate on SpotifyWatch our videos on The Green Software Foundation YouTube Channel!Connect with us on Twitter, Github and LinkedIn!TRANSCRIPT BELOW:Holly Cummins: Demand for AI is growing, demand for AI will grow indefinitely. But of course, that's not sustainable. Again, you know, it's not sustainable in terms of financially and so at some point there will be that correction. 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. Anne Currie: So hello and welcome to Environment Variables, where we bring you the latest news and updates from the world of sustainable software. Now, today you're not hearing the dulcet tones of your usual host, Chris Adams. I am a guest host on this, a common guest, a frequent guest host, Anne Currie. And my guest today is somebody I've known for quite a few years and I'm really looking forward to chatting to, Holly.So do you want to introduce yourself, Holly?Holly Cummins: So I'm Holly Cummins. I work for Red Hat. My day job is that, I'm a senior principal engineer and I'm helping to develop Quarkus, which is Java middleware. And I'm looking at the ecosystem of Quarkus, which sounds really sustainability oriented, but actually the day job aspect is I'm more looking atthe contributors and, you know, the extensions and that kind of thing. But one of the other things that I do end up looking a lot at is the ecosystem aspect of Quarkus in terms of sustainability. Because Quarkus is a extremely efficient Java runtime. And so when I joined the team, one of the things we asked well, one of the things I asked was, can we, know this is really efficient. Does that translate into an environmental, you know, benefit? Is it actually benefiting the ecosystem? You know, can we quantify it? And so we did that work and we were able to sort of validate our intuition that it did have a much lower carbon footprint, which was nice.But some things of what we did actually surprised us as well, which was also good because it's always good to be challenged in your assumptions. And so now part of what I'm doing as well is sort of broadening that focus from, instead of measuring what we've done in the past, thinking about, well, what does a sustainable middleware architecture look like?What kind of things do we need to be providing?Anne Currie: Thank you very much indeed. That's a really good overview of what I really primarily want to be talking about today. We will be talking about a couple of articles as usual on AI, but really I want to be focused on what you're doing in your day job because I think it's really interesting and incredibly relevant.So, as I said, my name is Anne Currie. I am the CEO of a learning and development company called Strategically Green. We do workshops and training around building green software and changing your systems to align with renewables. But I'm also one of the authors of O'Reilly's new book, Building Green Software, and Holly was probably the most, the biggest single reviewer/contributor to that book, and it was in her best interest to do so because, we make, I make tons and tons of reference to a concept that you came up with.I'm very interested in the backstory to this concept, but perhaps you can tell me a little bit more about it because it is, this is something I've not said to you before, but it is, this comes up in review feedback, for me, for the book, more than any other concept in the book. Lightswitch Ops. People saying, "Oh, we've put in, we've started to do Lightswitch Ops."If anybody says "I've started to do" anything, it's always Lightswitch Ops. So tell us, what is Lightswitch Ops?Holly Cummins: So Lightswitch Ops, it's really, it's about architecting your systems so that they can tolerate being turned off and on, which sounds, you know, it sounds sort of obvious, but historically that's not how our systems have worked. And so the first step is architect your system so that they can tolerate being turned off and on.And then the next part is once you have that, actually turn them off and on. And, it sort of, it came about because I'm working on product development now, and I started my career as a performance engineer, but in between those two, I was a client facing consultant, which was incredibly interesting.And it was, I mean, there was, so many things that were interesting, but one of the things that I sort of kept seeing was, you know, you sort of work with clients and some of them you're like, "Oh wow, you're, you know, you're really at the top of your game" and some you think, "why are you doing this way when this is clearly, you know, counterproductive" or that kind of thing.And one of the things that I was really shocked by was how much waste there was just everywhere. And I would see things like organizations where they would be running a batch job and the batch job would only run at the weekends, but the systems that supported it would be up 24/7. Or sometimes we see the opposite as well, where it's a test system for manual testing and people are only in the office, you know, nine to five only in one geo and the systems are up 24 hours.And the reason for this, again, it's sort of, you know, comes back to that initial thing, it's partly that we just don't think about it and, you know, that we're all a little bit lazy, but it's also that many of us have had quite negative experiences of if you turn your computer off, it will never be the same when it comes back up.I mean, I still have this with my laptop, actually, you know, I'm really reluctant to turn it off. But now we have, with laptops, we do have the model where you can close the lid and it will go to sleep and you know that it's using very little energy, but then when you bring it back up in the morning, it's the same as it was without having to have the energy penalty of keeping it on overnight. And I think, when you sort of look at the model of how we treat our lights in our house, nobody has ever sort of left a room and said, "I could turn the light off, but if I turn the light off, will the light ever come back on in the same form again?"Right? Like we just don't do that. We have a great deal of confidence that it's reliable to turn a light off and on and that it's low friction to do it. And so we need to get to that point with our computer systems. And you can sort roll with the analogy a bit more as well, which is in our houses, it tends to be quite a manual thing of turning the lights off and on.You know, I turn the light on when I need it. In institutional buildings, it's usually not a manual process to turn the lights off and on. Instead, what we end up is, we end up with some kind of automation. So, like, often there's a motion sensor. So, you know, I used to have it that if I would stay in our office late at night, at some point if you sat too still because you were coding and deep in thought, the lights around you would go off and then you'd have to, like, wave your arms to make the lights go back on.And it's that, you know, it's this sort of idea of like we can detect the traffic, we can detect the activity, and not waste the energy. And again, we can do exactly this our computer systems. So we can have it so that it's really easy to turn them off and on. And then we can go one step further and we can automate it and we can say, let's script to turn things off at 5pm because we're only in one geo.And you know, if we turn them off at 5pm, then we're enforcing quite a strict work life balance. So...Anne Currie: Nice, nice work.Holly Cummins: Yeah. Sustainable. Sustainable pace. Yeah. Or we can do sort of, you know, more sophisticated things as well. Or we can say, okay, well, let's just look at the traffic and if there's no traffic to this, let's turn it off.off Anne Currie: Yeah, it is an interestingly simple concept because it's, when people come up with something which is like, in some ways, similar analogies, a light bulb moment of, you know, why don't people turn things off? Becasue, so Holly, everybody is an unbelievably good public speaker.One of the best public speakers out there at the moment. And we first met because you came and gave talks at, in some tracks I was hosting on a variety. Some on high performance code, code efficiency,