Archive - /dev/sustainability

Network energy use not directly proportional to data volume

It is commonly assumed that data volume and network energy consumption are directly proportional, a notion perpetuated by numerous studies and media…

Jun 24 •

January 2024

Expect more overestimates of AI energy consumption

We’ve started to see AI doomerism spread to predictions of the vast quantity of energy AI is undoubtably going to consume.

Jan 2 •

July 2023

Paper Notes - ICT sector electricity consumption and greenhouse gas emissions 2020

An updated look at the total electricity consumption and associated GHG emissions for the ICT sector in 2020. Paper notes on Malmodin et al. (2023).

Jul 22, 2023 •

April 2023

Overestimating AI's water footprint

Researchers need to be more careful about the inputs into their models. Overestimates undermine the goal of reducing the environmental impact of IT.

Apr 17, 2023 •

March 2023

Paper Notes - The world wide web of carbon

Will we ever be able to accurately assess the carbon footprint of IT? Could a relational footprint methodology be more useful? Paper notes on Pasek et…

Mar 26, 2023 •

Improving the accuracy of the GHG protocol in time and space

The GHG Protocol needs to evolve to better represent the complexity of how energy markets work.

Mar 17, 2023 •

February 2023

Influencing the carbon emissions of AI

There is a correlation between the training time and energy consumption, but that doesn’t mean there is a correlation between training time and carbon…

Feb 27, 2023 •

Why don't data centers participate in demand response?

Data centers consuming too much energy at peak times - can't we just turn them off?

Feb 13, 2023 •

December 2022

Value judgments and sustainable computing

Puritan value judgments don’t help and any analysis based on concepts of digital sobriety or arbitrary definitions of waste should be rejected.

Dec 17, 2022 •

November 2022

Energy systems and 24/7 carbon free energy

With the grid mix constantly changing, what needs to happen to energy systems to reach the goal of 24/7 carbon free energy? Google has funded two…

Nov 7, 2022 •

October 2022

Paper Notes – RAPL In Action

Advantages and limitations of the Running Average Power Limit (RAPL) interface for measuring CPU power consumption.

Oct 10, 2022 •

September 2022

Paper notes - Jupiter Evolving: Transforming Google's Datacenter Network

Removing the aggregation spine resulted in 5x higher speed and capacity, and 41% reduction in power.

Sep 14, 2022 •

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