I talk to Tom Kennes, sustainable cloud consultant and ambassador for the Sustainable Digital Infrastructure Alliance (SDIA). We discuss how IT and software delivery can be more sustainable and what happens when Ronaldo uses Instagram. We also talked about the impact of programming language choice on carbon footprint, the amount of energy used when watching Netflix and how to right-size your cloud infrastructure. Lots to dive into for the techies with tools that are available to measure the impact of the software you build and deliver. The emphasis is very much on making small changes that add up to a big difference, so there are some really practical tips here for individuals and organisations.
SHOW NOTES
How to join the SDIA:
More on the the SDIA: https://sdialliance.org/
The Cloud Carbon Footprint Calculator: https://www.cloudcarbonfootprint.org/.
The most efficient programming languages:
https://cryptomode.com/c-is-the-most-energy-efficient-and-fastest-programming-language-study-finds/
AWS and Software Power Measurement
https://medium.com/teads-engineering/estimating-aws-ec2-instances-power-consumption-c9745e347959
Scaphandre: https://github.com/hubblo-org/scaphandre
RAPL: https://blog.chih.me/read-cpu-power-with-RAPL.html
Solar-powered website: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/
Instagram footprint for Ronaldo - actually a lot larger than Tom stated: https://www.gosports.com.my/news/high-energy-one-ronaldo-instagram-post-consumes-as-much-power-as-ten-households/
1 hour of Netflix - newer research suggests lower numbers than Tom stated: https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-what-is-the-carbon-footprint-of-streaming-video-on-netflix/.
- Carbon Innumeracy. People tend to underestimate the amount of CO2 from a gallon of gasoline a lot: Amir, G. Carbon innumeracy. PLOS ONE 2018, 13, e0196282. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324932129_Carbon_innumeracy/link/5aebc7ea0f7e9b01d3e0652f/download
QUOTES
2:05: "I think sustainability is, overall the best thing you can do. Anything that's more sustainable will, in the end benefit society." [TK]
4:05 "First you think cloud is a good thing, (and) cloud is a good thing. Then you notice that there are some, oddities in there. They notice that why aren't we tackling those things?" [TK]
4:33 "he real question here is how can we incentivize companies to start reporting on their digital footprint?" [TK]
4:49 "cloud is the least welcome environment where you can measure these things" [TK]
5:11 "sustainable IT attempts to enable companies and developers to start reporting on their GHG emissions, their carbon footprint, their
