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Start Simple
Technology professionals who have succeeded in leading their colleagues in transitioning to sustainable computing recommend building some simple metrics and sharing the results, which will gather attention. They also suggest community-building actions to create a committed group of supporters. In addition, there are opportunities for simple climate action. Start with one of these ideas and share them within your sustainability discussions.
Build a Cohort
Create Simple Metrics
Select a Cleaner Cloud Location
Reschedule Flexible Workloads
“Green” a New Project Plan
Make the Wins Visible
Build a Cohort
Practitioner’s Tip: “Start a green software Slack channel to share articles and promote discussion. Run learning sessions to introduce green software and encourage people to do the Linux Foundation’s Green Software course. It’s free and takes two hours!”
Find a way to informally engage colleagues who are interested in the environmental impact of their work. There will be quite a few. There is increasing press coverage of problems with data centers, while for years groups like the Green Software Foundation have been developing principles of sustainable information technology. Try these small steps to build a cohort that will eventually lead change:
- Talk with engineers and managers interested in green software design and engage them in brainstorming and feedback sessions to build momentum
- Start a thread on an existing discussion platforms such as Slack or a company wiki
- Share articles and ideas to prompt discussion and ask questions about how to implement ideas
- Invite participants to share lunch or set up a regular meetup to informally encourage learning
- Encourage people to take a class in green computing and even offer seminars themselves
Create Simple Metrics
Seeing real numbers motivates IT people to learn more and do more. Power consumption and carbon emissions from computing operations are measurable with existing data sources or with the assistance of simple tools. Here are some ideas:
Practitioner’s Tip: “It doesn’t need to be perfect. Begin with whatever data you can access and build from there.”
- Estimate carbon emissions using Green Algorithms (https://calculator.green-algorithms.org)
- Add a lightweight carbon tracking tool such as Carbon Aware (https://carbon-aware-sdk.greensoftware.foundation) or Green Metrics Tool (https://metrics.green-coding.io)
- Use carbon emissions reports from cloud hosting providers based on past usage
- Make the data relevant for colleagues by including an equivalence such as “same as driving X miles in a gas car.” The EPA Equivalency Calculator provides useful benchmarks (https://www.epa.gov/energy/greenhouse-gas-equivalencies-calculator)
- Organize a sustainability hackathon for building simple metrics. Leverage green software tools that estimate power consumption of hardware, or emissions of public cloud usage, or predict energy consumption of model training.
Learn more:
Cloud Sustainability Watch list of sustainable computing tools
Select a Cleaner Cloud Location
Key Evaluation Criteria
- PUE 1.2 or lower
- WUE 1.0 or lower
- Grid carbon intensity ideally below 100g CO2e/kWh and at most 300, per Electricity Maps[1]
- Not located in water-stressed regions per Global Drought Monitor[2] (unless zero-water)
- Availability of lower-redundancy options to reduce duplication of storage and compute
[1] Electricity Maps. “Live 24/7 CO₂ Emissions of Electricity Production.”.
[2] NOAA NDIS. “Global Drought Monitor.”
Find a way to informally engage colleagues who are interested in the environmental impact of their work. There will be quite a few. There is increasing press coverage of problems with data centers, while for years groups like the Green Software Foundation have been developing principles of sustainable information technology. Try these small steps to build a cohort that will eventually lead change:
- Talk with engineers and managers interested in green software design and engage them in brainstorming and feedback sessions to build momentum
- Start a thread on an existing discussion platforms such as Slack or a company wiki
- Share articles and ideas to prompt discussion and ask questions about how to implement ideas
- Invite participants to share lunch or set up a regular meetup to informally encourage learning
- Encourage people to take a class in green computing and even offer seminars themselves
Reschedule Flexible Workloads
There are opportunities for simple climate action by adjusting when your applications operate in the cloud. Jobs that are not time sensitive can switch to run at times when the electricity is clean. Find out the location of the data center where your flexible jobs run, and look up the grid carbon intensity on Electricity Maps. Is there a time of day when the power is cleanest? Reschedule the jobs to run at that time.
“Green” a New Project Plan
Study Green IT principles or take the free Linux Foundation green software course to gain ideas about changes that might apply to a project that is in the planning phase. Make suggestions that will improve the sustainability characteristics of the application. Try an emissions modeling tool such as Green Metrics Tool that enables predictive comparisons of the emissions and power consumption for one software application versus another.
“Including cloud sustainability metrics in upcoming projects is a good approach to try out green software development, without disrupting an organization.”
Make the Wins Visible
Build momentum for sustainable computing by sharing data regularly. The more people see real-world data, the more they think of ways to make their work more sustainable.
- Share the new metrics regularly and include sustainability metrics at every sprint and review
- Build a dashboard for teams to consult and add their own
- As momentum builds, implement technical improvements and share successful techniques
- Start talking and thinking in terms of green IT practices
Metrics
The W3C’s Software Carbon Intensity specification (SCI) is the standard metric for tracking and measuring cloud sustainability progress.
- Calculates the rate of GHG emissions from a software system
- Provides a framework for enabling power and carbon awareness in systems
- Defines how to track the GHG emissions from design, development, and use
- Low score is better and improvement comes from utilizing less physical hardware, consuming less energy, or using lower-carbon energy sources