Green Web Foundation

On November 5, 6 & 7, our own Michelle Thorne will host three online conversations in collaboration with Lori Regattieri and Fieke Jansen featuring a whole host of fantastic speakers. These conversations are free and open to all. Join in as we discuss the ecological burdens of computation, challenge the notion of scale, uplift communal and regenerative computing practices, and dream together about alternative socio-technical pathways that center people and planet over profit and capital. Thank you to the Mozilla Alumni Connection Grants for supporting these events. Nov 5: Playing with Solarpunk Computing and Tiny Infrastructures 12h-1.30pm (UT-3), 10am - 11.30am EST, and 4.00-5.30 PM (UTC +1) Nov 6: Tech-poetics and the Cosmos of Resistance 12h-1.30pm (UT-3), 10am - 11.30am EST, and 4.00-5.30 PM (UTC +1) Nov 7: Regenerative infrastructures 12h-1.30pm (UT-3), 10am - 11.30am EST, and 4.00-5.30 PM (UTC +1) For more info and to register head to our blog - https://lnkd.in/eC8Ubwbq

Following on from what we think was one of the most talked about digital sustainability conferences ever to take place, Green IO 🎙️London, Chris Adams shares some of his key takeaways and highlights from the event. https://lnkd.in/ecNDxCUk If you're curious about further events, there's also a Green IO conference in Paris in December 2024. https://lnkd.in/gWBHh_ZF. Our Director of Operations, Hannah Smith will be presenting.

𝗡𝗘𝗪: 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘀𝗵𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱 𝗘𝘂𝗿𝗼𝗽𝗲’𝘀 𝗻𝗮𝘀𝗰𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗶𝗻𝗱𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗽𝗼𝗹𝗶𝗰𝘆 𝗺𝗲𝗮𝗻 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗔𝗜? AI Now Institute has published a new collection of essays setting out to inform Europe's industrial policy for AI. Our chapter written with Fieke Jansen and Michelle Thorne calls out predatory delay and busts the myths about "AI for sustainability." We call for Europe to reframe what it means to be innovative and center environmental justice in its industrial policy. https://lnkd.in/ejWu5gPf As Europe ponders pouring billions of public funds into AI, this collection attempts to reorient the EU’s industrial policy away from its current trajectory of further entrenching big tech's dominance in the market––and outlines alternative pathways forward. EU policy makers and others concerned about our digital futures should check out this collection of policy research, perspectives, and evidence about the challenges of expanding public investment in a highly concentrated global AI market. The report has been curated and compiled by Frederike Kaltheuner, Leevi Saari, Amba Kak, and Sarah Myers West of the AI Now Institute. Other contributors include Europe’s foremost AI policy experts, including: Francesca Bria, Cecilia Rikap, Sarah Chander, Zuzanna Warso, Cristina Caffarra, Seda Gürses, Margarida Silva, Jeroen Merk, Kim van Sparrentak, Burcu Kilic, Michelle Thorne, Udbhav Tiwari, Francesco Bonfiglio, Fieke Jansen, and Mark Scott. Read the full report here: https://lnkd.in/eh5cFdHW

Can you help us improve the developer documentation for CO2.js? 🙏 This year, we're lucky enough to participate in Google Season of Docs (GSOD) 2024. GSOD is a funding program designed to support open source projects to allocate technical writing resources to improve the documentation for their project. Our goal for participating is to document the ways that people can make contributions both to CO2.js and the accompanying documentation. (Yep, document the documentation - pretty meta!) In doing this we hope to make it easier for people to make contributions. More info - https://lnkd.in/e_x5tNmw Put simply, we know that open-source projects with a robust user and contributor community are the ones that stick around. Paull's post below shows we're doing well on the user base - we're number 7 🎉 . But we've got work to do on the contribution and financial side of things. KEEN TO CONTRIBUTE TO THE DOCS? HERE'S HOW. Inspired by Hacktoberfest, here's a handy filtered list of issues that we think are good places to start contributing documentation across both repos - https://lnkd.in/eFszYsBU The readmes in both repos for CO2.js[1] and the associated developer documentation[2] provide instructions on how to clone, setup and get started with either codebase. You'll also find clear guidelines to steer you through the process of making a contribution. We’d deeply appreciate contributions from members of the community to help us make progress 💚 KEEN TO HELP US FINANCIALLY? Another great contribution is to donate funds. Funds help us keep the fantastic Fershad Irani employed as our core contributor - maintaining and progressing all that is CO2.js. Our donate page goes into more detail https://lnkd.in/epAwSe8F. Drop us a line if you've any questions or feedback here or via our website - https://lnkd.in/eJrmbSXR. Thanks! #hacktoberfest #co2js #greencoding ---- [1] CO2.js repo README - https://lnkd.in/ePnRundv [2] Developer documentation repo README - https://lnkd.in/eap4422r

We’ve written about our work with NGI Search on carbon.txt[1] – a project to make sustainability data that's coming into the public domain in 2025 as a result of new laws much more discoverable. We're doing this by defining a consistent place for web scrapers and crawlers to look for it. With that in mind, it makes sense for us to speak to people working in search, who build and maintain this kind of software to learn more. Our Executive Director Chris Adams will be in Munich between Wed 9 Oct and Fri 11 Oct for the 6th International Open Search Symposium. Hop over to our blog to find out more about this event and why we’re going: https://lnkd.in/eBTpKuhe #search #sustainability #opensearch #csrd #carbontxt #fossilfree ---- [1]: https://lnkd.in/d7sCgimX

We recently made our first attempt at measuring our digital estate emissions*. Our whole mission is centred around reaching a fossil free internet. And well… if you want to decarbonise the digital services you’re using, it helps to know how much you need to decarbonise. Basically where are your dragons? 🐲 Even with our expertise, getting an idea of this felt like a daunting process. Especially when like all small organisations our resources are limited. Where to even start? Luckily in Feb this year, Scott Logic announced their new open-source Technology Carbon Standard (#TCS). The TCS is a proposed framework to help people just like us trying to understand their digital estate's emissions. Over the summer our technical team - Hannah Smith, Chris Adams and Fershad Irani - worked with the nice folks at Scott Logic - David Rees, James Camilleri and Oliver Cronk - to test drive the TCS for the first time. As a result we've published the first detailed case study on the TCS website sharing our experiences using the framework. In it we explain our assumptions, methodologies and data sources. We hope this'll be of use to others attempting to do the same thing. Also hoping that others will openly share their pragmatic approaches for creating these estimates so we can all build this field together. We know our methods weren't perfect. But things never are when you don't have unlimited resources to throw at new problems. It's a start. That said, the write-up weighs in at just under 20,000 words. There was a lot to say about how we did things! 🤯 To save you some brain space we drew out six key things worthy of attention. These are: 💎 1. Digital technology is not impact free and reductions are possible 💎 2. TCS helps fill key gaps in estimating digital estate emissions 💎 3. TCS can’t cover everything needed to produce estimates for digital products or services 💎 4. The digital sustainability industry needs to look beyond #greencoding to influencing impactful structural change 💎 5. There’s a serious lack of data and transparency from suppliers 💎 6. Employee hardware is more significant than originally assumed, especially monitors We talk more about the project and why we've done it on our blog: https://lnkd.in/eFqRcwmj You can jump straight to the case study on the TCS for all the wonderful detail including a lot more about each of those 6 insights - https://lnkd.in/eZQKhYnp A huge thank you to Scott Logic for this collaboration - we thoroughly enjoyed working with them 💚 * When we say "digital estate emissions", what do we mean? We mean getting a carbon emissions estimate for all the digital products and services our staff use, as well as estimating the emissions from the digital we build ourselves and that is subsequently used. This is a broad scope of the whole digital kit and caboodle we're responsible for.

The latest of the Green Web Newsletter is here! Here’s a glimpse of what we’ve been working on this month: 👁️🗨️ Narrative Shift 👁️🗨️ Report: Thinking about using AI? We’ve published our AI briefing, on the environmental impact of AI and what can be done to mitigate it, a useful guide to anyone working with AI. 👉 https://lnkd.in/en7nv3Zz — 🏢 Applied Digital Sustainability 🏢 As part of Google’s Season of Docs, we’re focused on improving the CO2.js library documentation. If you’re into open-source and digital sustainability, we’d love your input on making it more accessible. 👉 https://lnkd.in/e_x5tNmw We partnered with Scott Logic in using their Tech Carbon Standard, estimating the carbon footprint of our services. Our experience shed light on gaps in digital carbon accounting, from employee hardware emissions to the need for supplier data transparency. 👉 https://lnkd.in/eFqRcwmj We’re opening up our hands-on workshops in October on Estimating Digital Carbon Emissions. Led by Chris Adams and Katrin Fritsch, these workshops are ideal for teams looking to manage the environmental impact of their digital estates. 👉 https://lnkd.in/dKw5-NnF — 🕸 Green Web Data Ecosystem🕸 Happy EED Day! With the Energy Efficiency Directive (EED) now in effect in Europe, larger data centers are required to disclose how they source their energy. This marks a big step toward transparency in internet infrastructure, read our explainer on why it matters. 👉 https://lnkd.in/eSR-uWT5 Our Response to the GHG Protocol Scope 2 Survey We’ve shared our thoughts on how energy should be counted as “green” in the GHG Protocol’s Scope 2 survey. Our blog provides a summary of our feedback for those interested in the evolving standards, as large tech companies face scrutiny over their green energy claims. 👉 https://lnkd.in/eui3wh96 Reviewing Green Hosting Verification We’re reviewing the evidence we accept for verifying green hosting providers. In aiming to align with the latest science and evolving sustainability standards, we are sharing updates on as we move forward. 👉 https://lnkd.in/eiAjGySE — There’s also more in the full newsletter, including updates on our digital carbon workshops and a few thought-provoking reads our team has been sharing. You can read the full edition here 👉 https://lnkd.in/eV_PxacX And if you’d like to receive this every month in your inbox sign up here: 👉 https://lnkd.in/d5P8T7hu

We’re proud to share our report Critical Dependencies: How power consolidation of digital infrastructures threatens democracies—and what we can do about it. It’s written to help funders who want to better understand how to strengthen the public’s interest in digital infrastructures at a systemic rather than symptomatic level. The report summarizes harms caused by unhealthy dependencies and recommends how to challenge power consolidation and foster meaningful alternatives. https://lnkd.in/eQhzzMjM Some of the wealthiest companies in the world spend billions in lobbying, sponsoring research, obscuring their emissions and building out parallel energy and digital infrastructures to further secure their market positions. Meanwhile, deliberative democratic processes take time and resources. The public and, at times, democratically elected officials lack access to the data and decision-making about our digital futures. Furthermore, the technical expertise to evaluate these tradeoffs from a public interest perspective is structurally under-resourced. This report seeks to call out these maneuvers and recommend pathways for funding in the public’s interest with a focus on the energy and climate impacts of digital infrastructures and harms caused by current ownership models. We call for actions that are ambitious, collaborative and intersectional to help redistribute more power to the public interest and to just and sustainable digital futures. Thank you to Stiftung Mercator for commissioning this work and many fantastic organizations for your research and input. Carla Hustedt Elisabeth Noefer Lea Wulf Nikita Kekana Max Schulze Dr. Becky Kazansky Fieke Jansen Sarah Myers West Andreea Belu Raegan MacDonald If you’d like to learn more or explore how to apply these recommendations to your context, please get in touch! #digitalsustainability #digitalinfrastructure #publicinterest

Microsoft's $30 billion dollar AI business with fossil-fuel companies? [1] Tech companies under reporting 660% of their emissions from data centers, driven by demand for AI compute? [2] There's lots to talk about regarding the environmental impacts of AI systems. To help you navigate this murky space, we're publishing this briefing: Thinking about using AI? Here’s what you can and (probably) can’t change about its environmental impact. https://lnkd.in/en7nv3Zz Green Web Foundation team members Hannah Smith and Chris Adams walk you through five things every business should know about the environmental impacts of AI. We also share actions you can take when considering using AI in your organization and help you understand the parts of the "stack" you can influence and the parts that probably are beyond your control. Give it a read and let us know what you think! #ai #digitalsustainability #aiforclimate Max Schulze, Mark Butcher, Gaël DUEZ, Michael J. Oghia, Boris Gamazaychikov, Lynn Kaack -- (1) https://lnkd.in/ggRr7yFU (2) https://lnkd.in/dQuYgvRM

If you care about the world reaching a fossil free internet, then you'll probably want to keep an eye on the raft of new legislation being passed around the world, that done right, would bring an unprecedented degree of transparency and disclosure on climate. Datacentres above 500KW in Europe, for the first time will have to report: - how much electricity they used in the last year - how much power came from renewable sources, and how much of this relied on the company buying increasingly controverisial ‘unbundled’ renewable energy credits - how much water they used - and many more datapoints This weekend, in Europe, the reporting deadline passed for one law which was particularly relevant to our work – the Energy Efficiency Directive. In this post, our in-house policy wonk Chris explains why this matters. https://lnkd.in/eSR-uWT5 #energyefficiencydirective #eed #transparency #disclosure #energy #renewables #csrd #sustainability #digitalsustainability