1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:21,465 *36C3 preroll music* 2 00:00:21,465 --> 00:00:24,660 Herald: Our next speaker is Chris Adams, and we were talking about reducing carbon 3 00:00:24,660 --> 00:00:28,854 in the digital realm. How to understand the environmental impact of the digital 4 00:00:28,854 --> 00:00:33,844 products you built and take measurable steps to green your stack. Floor is yours. 5 00:00:33,844 --> 00:00:41,490 Chris Adams: Cool! *applause* Hello everyone. First of all, can you folks hear 6 00:00:41,490 --> 00:00:46,378 me in the back? Yeah. If you can just raise your hands. Excellent, cooI! All 7 00:00:46,378 --> 00:00:51,140 right. Hello everyone. My name is Chris Adams. As you can see, Mr. Credit, Chris 8 00:00:51,140 --> 00:00:55,470 Adams on pretty much every online ralley. Please don't try to follow this link 9 00:00:55,470 --> 00:00:58,667 because it's not actually gonna go anywhere yet, but it will be up at the end 10 00:00:58,667 --> 00:01:03,410 of this talk. I'm just going to introduce myself. If you don't already know me, my 11 00:01:03,410 --> 00:01:07,830 name is Chris Adams. I have a background working in environmental kind of wacky 12 00:01:07,830 --> 00:01:12,920 startups from Loco2, which was all about trying to make trains easier to book than 13 00:01:12,920 --> 00:01:16,738 planes. A.M.E.E, which was all about putting kind of carbon calculation as an 14 00:01:16,738 --> 00:01:20,210 API, so you could work out the carbon footprint of anything. And now I spend a 15 00:01:20,210 --> 00:01:23,970 bunch of my time working with the Green Web Foundation, where our mission is to 16 00:01:23,970 --> 00:01:28,110 basically make the web green. And I also help organize an online community called 17 00:01:28,110 --> 00:01:33,300 ClimateAction.tech, which as you can see is for folk like yourselves who want to 18 00:01:33,300 --> 00:01:39,870 work out how to do something about climate in their day job and what they do. I've 19 00:01:39,870 --> 00:01:45,580 got about 45 minutes with you and this is a kind of rough outline for the day. I'm 20 00:01:45,580 --> 00:01:49,890 gonna briefly give you a kind of primer on how you measure carbon and why you might 21 00:01:49,890 --> 00:01:55,030 measure that. I'll share with you a mental model which I found useful for helping 22 00:01:55,030 --> 00:02:00,000 think about what steps I can actually take as professional working in this field; and 23 00:02:00,000 --> 00:02:04,380 then I'll give you some pointers of where to go next. If you feel compelled to do 24 00:02:04,380 --> 00:02:09,250 something about, well, what is essentially an existential challenge and the biggest 25 00:02:09,250 --> 00:02:15,500 challenge we are already facing. So first of all, measuring carbon! So, can you just 26 00:02:15,500 --> 00:02:20,800 show you... raise your hands if you've seen this before? Yes. The water cycle. So 27 00:02:20,800 --> 00:02:24,640 you get the idea that we've got like a water, kind of, evaporates, goes along 28 00:02:24,640 --> 00:02:29,690 into the sky, then comes down and rains. And then... generally it's best if it 29 00:02:29,690 --> 00:02:33,850 doesn't go in one place because that's that's a good thing. But generally we have 30 00:02:33,850 --> 00:02:40,400 like cycles in nature and one of them we have is for water and we also have 31 00:02:40,400 --> 00:02:43,451 cycles elsewhere. And that's kind of why I want to share with you here, because there 32 00:02:43,451 --> 00:02:47,930 are also cycles around carbon. So what you're seeing here is actually some freeze 33 00:02:47,930 --> 00:02:54,200 frames of a really, really cool but somewhat confusing video. And as I was 34 00:02:54,200 --> 00:02:58,930 saying, kind of carbon works on a kind of slower timescale that might have here. So, 35 00:02:58,930 --> 00:03:01,960 this is an... this is basically a diagram of all the carbon in the world with some 36 00:03:01,960 --> 00:03:06,760 idea of proportions. All right? So, the green stuff up here, this is us like we're 37 00:03:06,760 --> 00:03:11,760 made of carbon. It turns out. So a tree. Trees are made of carbon. And when living 38 00:03:11,760 --> 00:03:14,480 things die and decompose, some of the carbon ends in the atmosphere as we 39 00:03:14,480 --> 00:03:19,810 decompose. The purple stuff here - this is like the ocean. Fish are made of carbon, 40 00:03:19,810 --> 00:03:23,610 too. And so are plants and everything like that. And when they die, they sink down, 41 00:03:23,610 --> 00:03:28,100 which is why you've got this massive chunky like stock of carbon down here. 42 00:03:28,100 --> 00:03:32,070 Eventually, some of that might become sediment, then form rock, then end up in 43 00:03:32,070 --> 00:03:36,090 this kind of black stuff around here, which we kind of consider that the earth's 44 00:03:36,090 --> 00:03:39,740 crust. So then at the top, we've got carbon in the atmosphere. So you really 45 00:03:39,740 --> 00:03:43,420 can't see it very well. But there is carbon up here. This is kind of 46 00:03:43,420 --> 00:03:47,090 atmospheric carbon, really. And there is like if you watch this video that I've 47 00:03:47,090 --> 00:03:52,319 linked to, you can see all moving around as a cycle. But this is kind of wealth 48 00:03:52,319 --> 00:03:59,850 carbon, really. So now in about 1850, we started using a lot more energy. And 49 00:03:59,850 --> 00:04:03,730 to meet that demand of all this energy, we started burning fossil fuels in earnest as 50 00:04:03,730 --> 00:04:07,530 well as burning wood for fuel. And you can see the fossil fuels here as kind of stuff 51 00:04:07,530 --> 00:04:12,930 that's kind of come out of here and is now represented here. And we've also taken 52 00:04:12,930 --> 00:04:18,470 some carbon in the earth and burn some of that, and like... What is it? Where does 53 00:04:18,470 --> 00:04:23,000 this all go? There's a clue in these arrows on the screen. Right? Now if we 54 00:04:23,000 --> 00:04:27,280 fast forward to 2017, it looks a bit more like this. You've seen like there's less 55 00:04:27,280 --> 00:04:30,970 of this red stuff down here because it's got into here and because it's circulated 56 00:04:30,970 --> 00:04:38,230 all the way around. We've ended up with carbon in other parts of Earth. And, in 57 00:04:38,230 --> 00:04:41,909 particular, you'll see that we have fewer red dots down here, but we've got a lot 58 00:04:41,909 --> 00:04:46,840 more around here, which is going to pushed some of the carbon higher up here. So this 59 00:04:46,840 --> 00:04:50,560 is kind of... if there's one thing I want you to kind of really take away is that 60 00:04:50,560 --> 00:04:55,050 when we talk about climate, it's really about carbon. And we need as an industry 61 00:04:55,050 --> 00:04:59,130 to be able to get good at understanding how to reduce carbon more than anything 62 00:04:59,130 --> 00:05:03,680 else. If we're going to be thinking about climate. Now, I'll try and break this down 63 00:05:03,680 --> 00:05:08,259 to a kind of simple way, which I found really, really useful for this. There's a 64 00:05:08,259 --> 00:05:13,860 lady on Twitter. Her name is Professor Julia Kay Steinberger. She's awesome. She 65 00:05:13,860 --> 00:05:16,699 has this really nice way. She recently shared this thread on Twitter where she 66 00:05:16,699 --> 00:05:22,060 basically explained how she explains kind of climate change to her children who are 4 67 00:05:22,060 --> 00:05:26,259 and 7 years old. And she basically did it this way. She got like a globe, wrapped it 68 00:05:26,259 --> 00:05:30,960 in some plastic and then said, well, this is basically what happens. You understand 69 00:05:30,960 --> 00:05:34,090 the idea of being wrapped up in things getting warm and things getting too warm. 70 00:05:34,090 --> 00:05:37,831 That's it. And like, that turned out to be a really effective way for her to do it. 71 00:05:37,831 --> 00:05:42,979 And it turned out if kids can get this stuff, then I think we can. And I think 72 00:05:42,979 --> 00:05:46,830 it's really, really useful for us to kind of be aware that carbon is actually a thing 73 00:05:46,830 --> 00:05:52,189 that we do need to be able to count, and track and account for in our jobs. So 74 00:05:52,189 --> 00:05:55,729 we've spoken about this on a planetary scale, which isn't all that actionable. 75 00:05:55,729 --> 00:06:00,120 But if we were to kind of bring this down to organizational scale, where the most of 76 00:06:00,120 --> 00:06:05,520 us might kind of work and more specific, it might be easier for us to act upon. It 77 00:06:05,520 --> 00:06:09,370 might look a little bit like this. There are established ways to measure carbon 78 00:06:09,370 --> 00:06:13,629 within an organization you work in and in the same way that accountants might talk 79 00:06:13,629 --> 00:06:17,659 about legal ownership of a company. There are guidelines for talking about who has 80 00:06:17,659 --> 00:06:21,800 responsibility for emissions when you're reporting and deciding who should be 81 00:06:21,800 --> 00:06:26,180 changed, who should be making reductions. And I'm sure in this diagram here to 82 00:06:26,180 --> 00:06:30,249 actually take some very, very dull, dry material into something that we can relate 83 00:06:30,249 --> 00:06:34,979 to, which is hot beverages and coffee. And, generally, you can think of it like 84 00:06:34,979 --> 00:06:40,199 this: if either these three kind of scopes, there's this idea of scope 1 85 00:06:40,199 --> 00:06:45,249 emissions, which is basically if I burn fossil fuels to heat up a, say, container 86 00:06:45,249 --> 00:06:49,850 so I can have coffee, then that's the emissions from me burning less fossil 87 00:06:49,850 --> 00:06:55,339 fuels myself and my scope 1 emissions. Scope 2 might be me using a kettle. So if 88 00:06:55,339 --> 00:06:59,300 someone is a burning coal to generate electricity for me to kind of boil the 89 00:06:59,300 --> 00:07:04,460 kettle, then that's my scope 2. Now scope 3 might be me walking to a store or into a 90 00:07:04,460 --> 00:07:09,120 coffee shop and all the emissions and all of that supply chain - that's my scope 3. 91 00:07:09,120 --> 00:07:13,509 So there's this idea of kind of like dependency chain of carbon, which... 92 00:07:13,509 --> 00:07:16,210 because I'm speaking to a bunch of people who have some understanding where 93 00:07:16,210 --> 00:07:20,210 technology I think you should be, kind of, you should be ready to be comfortable with 94 00:07:20,210 --> 00:07:24,840 the concept of dependency chains and things like that. And to make this a bit 95 00:07:24,840 --> 00:07:30,619 more concrete, I refer to, say, a good example. So Stripe... Has anyone heard of 96 00:07:30,619 --> 00:07:35,619 Stripe here? Okay, a few of you. Okay. So, basically, payments company. All right? 97 00:07:35,619 --> 00:07:39,169 Now they are actually pretty good about sharing information about what they do and 98 00:07:39,169 --> 00:07:44,870 what their emissions are. And you can see this here. They've basically got... in 99 00:07:44,870 --> 00:07:48,839 2017, they started making noises about becoming carbon neutral and they started 100 00:07:48,839 --> 00:07:52,969 reporting information in these kind of scopes here. And you'll see this phrase - 101 00:07:52,969 --> 00:07:57,789 TCO2E, but basically just think of that as carbon dioxide, the stuff that's warming 102 00:07:57,789 --> 00:08:01,279 up the world because there's different gases, but they all have more or less the 103 00:08:01,279 --> 00:08:06,509 same effect. So in many cases, people will use the term CO2E2 to describe all of 104 00:08:06,509 --> 00:08:11,939 these kind of basket of gases. All right? But you see here that from a scope 1 105 00:08:11,939 --> 00:08:15,849 emissions are quite small because they're usually just heating a building. Scope 2 106 00:08:15,849 --> 00:08:21,110 is a little bit higher, because they pay to, say, keep a building running. And then 107 00:08:21,110 --> 00:08:25,010 you'll see down here that there's massive scope 3, because they tend to pay for a 108 00:08:25,010 --> 00:08:28,740 lift infrastructure and have a lot of people flying around as if they're prevent 109 00:08:28,740 --> 00:08:34,229 a lists??? and so on. All right? Let's look at some other other examples. Amazon! 110 00:08:34,229 --> 00:08:38,479 So Amazon repeat started reporting on CO2 emissions for the first time this year. 111 00:08:38,479 --> 00:08:43,240 And long story short, their carbon footprint is about the same as the country 112 00:08:43,240 --> 00:08:49,029 of Finland. Right. Which is kind of large. And as you can see, because obviously they 113 00:08:49,029 --> 00:08:53,529 run lots of services, which is why you got 4,5 million tonnes of CO2. They also have 114 00:08:53,529 --> 00:08:57,480 a lot of warehouses and things like that, and have a lot of kind of cars or vehicles 115 00:08:57,480 --> 00:09:01,460 that are getting things around. But because they actually have a large supply 116 00:09:01,460 --> 00:09:05,670 chain themselves, they have a massive honking great scope set of scope 3 117 00:09:05,670 --> 00:09:10,760 emissions. So let's look at another company, right. Google. So Google is a 118 00:09:10,760 --> 00:09:14,570 Google has a surprisingly low emissions considering scale, about the same as the 119 00:09:14,570 --> 00:09:19,230 African country of Liberia. All right? Now, there's something interesting here. 120 00:09:19,230 --> 00:09:25,180 Google have reported their emissions with scope 1, 2 that you can see here. And 3, 121 00:09:25,180 --> 00:09:30,070 but they have this interesting thing here, where this is the energy they're using. 122 00:09:30,070 --> 00:09:34,020 But this is the energy they say that they're using because they are purchasing 123 00:09:34,020 --> 00:09:38,360 what are basically renewable energy credits, which is one way of using green 124 00:09:38,360 --> 00:09:42,920 energy. If you do not have access to green energy in certain parts of the grid and 125 00:09:42,920 --> 00:09:47,520 Google are pretty good in this field, but it's worth bearing that in mind. Google 126 00:09:47,520 --> 00:09:51,260 are transparent about this stuff, where at Amazon, you don't see these numbers. So 127 00:09:51,260 --> 00:09:55,380 this number could be somewhat higher for we know. All right. So this gives you an 128 00:09:55,380 --> 00:09:58,400 idea of what some of these numbers might look like. And then let's look at another 129 00:09:58,400 --> 00:10:04,880 company, which is also, well I assume you might have heard of. Is this works? Yes. I 130 00:10:04,880 --> 00:10:09,790 go to Apple. Yeah. So Apple has... these are their emissions with just their 131 00:10:09,790 --> 00:10:14,200 facilities. So just their data centers and just, say, the offices that they have. 132 00:10:14,200 --> 00:10:18,280 Right. So this is quite low, by comparison. Right. So this is carbon 133 00:10:18,280 --> 00:10:22,750 emissions of maybe Gambia - another small African country. All right. And 134 00:10:22,750 --> 00:10:25,560 you'll see once again, by sourcing renewable energy, they've had a kind of 135 00:10:25,560 --> 00:10:29,670 quite big reduction in the emissions that they otherwise wouldn't had. But you'll 136 00:10:29,670 --> 00:10:33,670 also see that in scope 3, because there's lots of flying and because there's lots of 137 00:10:33,670 --> 00:10:38,000 commuting, they have a lovely new office miles away from anywhere. So you have to 138 00:10:38,000 --> 00:10:41,360 drive to get there, you know, it's like, I don't know, 40 percent of the emissions 139 00:10:41,360 --> 00:10:46,680 were just their facilities. We have to drive there and back. All right. But if 140 00:10:46,680 --> 00:10:49,551 you look at the emissions from Apple as all the products that people buy, you'll 141 00:10:49,551 --> 00:10:53,530 see that the emissions are somewhat larger, about the same size as Mongolia, 142 00:10:53,530 --> 00:10:57,740 which is kind of large. And you will also see that there is a large... this is a 143 00:10:57,740 --> 00:11:01,050 breakdown from Apples annual report, and they basically... they're pretty 144 00:11:01,050 --> 00:11:04,430 transparent about this stuff and they're good on this. And they say this is where 145 00:11:04,430 --> 00:11:08,900 the emissions come from. And you can see all the way around here, this is the 146 00:11:08,900 --> 00:11:13,760 manufacturing. The machines they have. And then if we zoom in to like this bit over 147 00:11:13,760 --> 00:11:19,200 here. Right. You'll see that there's a little bit of information there. There's 148 00:11:19,200 --> 00:11:23,360 like, obviously use phase. But the main car, the main impact from what they do is 149 00:11:23,360 --> 00:11:29,660 actually making the electronics. So this is kind of how we tend to think about a 150 00:11:29,660 --> 00:11:34,030 carbon and how one might report on carbon and make it and make decisions 151 00:11:34,030 --> 00:11:37,030 to reduce carbon. All right. Now, I'm going to share with you a mental model, 152 00:11:37,030 --> 00:11:43,810 which I found helpful in this field. I call it Platform, Packets and Process. And 153 00:11:43,810 --> 00:11:47,730 it's generally aimed taking something which is quite abstract to this scope 1, 2 154 00:11:47,730 --> 00:11:51,710 and 3 thing, to something that you might act upon inside the teams that you work 155 00:11:51,710 --> 00:11:56,820 in. And it kind of maps to the kind of groups that you might be working in if 156 00:11:56,820 --> 00:12:00,450 you're, say, a frontend developer or a backend developer, or a designer, or 157 00:12:00,450 --> 00:12:04,501 product manager. So it kind of tries to map to that. And as you can see, platform 158 00:12:04,501 --> 00:12:07,890 might be infrastructure you run; Packets is infrastructure other folk run, like the 159 00:12:07,890 --> 00:12:11,610 rest of the Internet; and Process would be decisions that are made inside your 160 00:12:11,610 --> 00:12:16,330 organization that cause that to be emissions. So if you highlight a large 161 00:12:16,330 --> 00:12:19,730 company and you have a massive, say, corporate campus which is miles away from 162 00:12:19,730 --> 00:12:22,910 everyone else has to drive to. Then there's gonna be a load of emissions from 163 00:12:22,910 --> 00:12:27,960 that decision that you actually make. So let's run through this. On the scope 1, 2, 164 00:12:27,960 --> 00:12:31,870 3 thing I shared with you, this is a kind of how it maps. And this might look like 165 00:12:31,870 --> 00:12:35,650 some of the things, some activities you might have been involved in that will 166 00:12:35,650 --> 00:12:40,150 create emissions. So, generally, on the platform side, if you're running 167 00:12:40,150 --> 00:12:44,150 infrastructure yourself, there'll be scope 2; if it's scope 3 you'll see here and, 168 00:12:44,150 --> 00:12:50,800 well, I'll go into the other ones in more detail later. All right. So this is the 169 00:12:50,800 --> 00:12:54,560 model that I'm sharing with you today. All right. So let's have a look at Platform: 170 00:12:54,560 --> 00:12:57,700 infrastructure that you run. There are kind of three levels, which I'm going to 171 00:12:57,700 --> 00:13:02,460 share with you today, which might be of use to you. All right. There are so 172 00:13:02,460 --> 00:13:06,800 basically Provisioning, Provider and I'm a bit worried about showing this last one 173 00:13:06,800 --> 00:13:10,030 because it's kind of new: the other programing languages. And that's partly 174 00:13:10,030 --> 00:13:14,480 based on some stuff from yesterday. But also, I'm a bit worried about kind of 175 00:13:14,480 --> 00:13:19,410 inciting the pitchfolks when I share this. But we'll see where we go with this. So 176 00:13:19,410 --> 00:13:22,280 Provisioning is one level you might actually have if you build digital 177 00:13:22,280 --> 00:13:28,890 products and you run servers. All right. So this chart you see here is a chart from 178 00:13:28,890 --> 00:13:33,870 the CEO Power of Wireless Cloud Report. This basically shows how Australia uses 179 00:13:33,870 --> 00:13:38,880 the Internet and it gives you an idea that, well, we don't use the Internet in a 180 00:13:38,880 --> 00:13:44,090 uniform fashion all the time, because basically if you think about us being set 181 00:13:44,090 --> 00:13:49,900 at midnight as we tend to fall asleep, we tend to use Internet less. All right. And 182 00:13:49,900 --> 00:13:52,590 then as we wake up, we might say kind of have coffee or something like that, then 183 00:13:52,590 --> 00:13:57,200 as more of us come to work, we start using it more. And then later on we work during 184 00:13:57,200 --> 00:14:00,950 the day, then we'll go home. But you will start watching Netflix and things. And 185 00:14:00,950 --> 00:14:03,810 then once again, we fall asleep and then we get to there. So there is a kind of 186 00:14:03,810 --> 00:14:07,490 pattern. And if you have any analytics on how your own tools are using your ad 187 00:14:07,490 --> 00:14:12,660 services are used, you'll see these kind of waves and patterns in how it works. And 188 00:14:12,660 --> 00:14:16,560 this is worth bearing in mind, because traditionally when we've had to provision 189 00:14:16,560 --> 00:14:22,250 services to support something like a Web site or a video streaming service, the way 190 00:14:22,250 --> 00:14:27,500 that we used to do it was basically buy a big server that can handle the peak usage. 191 00:14:27,500 --> 00:14:32,570 And we just accept that. Because Provisioning is quite a difficult kind of, 192 00:14:32,570 --> 00:14:37,000 because it's a pain to do. We just leave this big box idling most of the time in 193 00:14:37,000 --> 00:14:42,340 the hope that we could actually hit the surfing at the peak, right. Now the 194 00:14:42,340 --> 00:14:46,590 downside of that is that, well, if we can make this conceptual leap that the cloud 195 00:14:46,590 --> 00:14:50,780 computing is someone else's computer, then it shouldn't be that much of a leap again, 196 00:14:50,780 --> 00:14:54,930 to realize that computers run electricity and we generally burn fossil fuels right 197 00:14:54,930 --> 00:15:00,000 now to generate electricity. So in the example we had before, when we had this 198 00:15:00,000 --> 00:15:03,740 big box that wasn't being used, we would basically be burning money to pay for 199 00:15:03,740 --> 00:15:07,670 capacity, we didn't have. But we're also burning fossil fuels and causing emissions 200 00:15:07,670 --> 00:15:13,070 one way. Now we've got better kind of running infrastructure. All right. So 201 00:15:13,070 --> 00:15:15,840 we've had this kind of trend over the last, say, 10 to 15 years to abstract 202 00:15:15,840 --> 00:15:19,930 machines away to make them easier to manage. So this might be VMs or 203 00:15:19,930 --> 00:15:25,560 containers, or dinos, or unicorns, or whatever you might prefer to use. But in 204 00:15:25,560 --> 00:15:29,010 general, the pattern is make something more abstract and then make it easier to 205 00:15:29,010 --> 00:15:34,630 spin it up and down in response to demand. All right. This is better because we now 206 00:15:34,630 --> 00:15:38,930 have something looks a bit like this. So we are not... we're wasting less well, 207 00:15:38,930 --> 00:15:42,870 we're burning less money, but we're still burning money. And as a result, we're 208 00:15:42,870 --> 00:15:47,570 still burning fossil fuels. Now, there's some new changes in the last few years, 209 00:15:47,570 --> 00:15:51,680 which are relatively recent, and we're seeing kind of changes in how we work now, 210 00:15:51,680 --> 00:15:55,529 which look a lot, look and sound is sometimes referred to as like service lists 211 00:15:55,529 --> 00:16:01,220 or functions as a service if you work on the backend with the servers, right. Now 212 00:16:01,220 --> 00:16:05,210 here, this is interesting, because we're rewarded for efficient use of computers, 213 00:16:05,210 --> 00:16:09,690 because we basically pay on a per request basis. So if someone tries to load a page, 214 00:16:09,690 --> 00:16:13,120 we pay for specifically that request. And then when we're not using it, 215 00:16:13,120 --> 00:16:18,740 theoretically we're paying for nothing and theoretically things can spin right down. 216 00:16:18,740 --> 00:16:24,450 So there's a much clearer mapping between the usage and what you would pay for here. 217 00:16:24,450 --> 00:16:30,730 Now, there is a trade off here that is the number of providers that if you want to 218 00:16:30,730 --> 00:16:34,570 use tools like this and have this much tighter mapping is that we end up with a 219 00:16:34,570 --> 00:16:39,120 small number of people who do provide this. So if you were to go to, if you want 220 00:16:39,120 --> 00:16:42,130 to move to something like this, you generally end up using something like 221 00:16:42,130 --> 00:16:48,140 either Microsoft Stacks or Google or AWS. And this kind of presents us with a kind 222 00:16:48,140 --> 00:16:54,810 of awkward problem right now. If we care about climate and we care about like 223 00:16:54,810 --> 00:16:59,590 basically being able to solve problems, as say professionals, we have to choose two 224 00:16:59,590 --> 00:17:04,150 of these three things. So we kind of care about the fossil fuel thing because we're 225 00:17:04,150 --> 00:17:08,530 in a climate crisis officially now. All right. Also since I think December, when 226 00:17:08,530 --> 00:17:13,870 the EU parlament declared this. If you've used to running any kind of online 227 00:17:13,870 --> 00:17:17,720 service, you'll be aware that in many cases there is a kind of shift to 228 00:17:17,720 --> 00:17:20,960 basically use a hosted thing, because it turns out that running infrastructure is 229 00:17:20,960 --> 00:17:25,760 extremely complicated. And in many cases, if you can buy versus build, then you'll 230 00:17:25,760 --> 00:17:30,030 often save yourself a lot of hassle. And the final one thing is, well, avoiding 231 00:17:30,030 --> 00:17:33,350 oligopolies is quite a good thing, and because diverse ecosystems are healthy 232 00:17:33,350 --> 00:17:37,760 ecosystems and we kind of don't really have so many options right now; if you do 233 00:17:37,760 --> 00:17:42,240 care about this, it does feel a little bit like this. And as we saw from just 234 00:17:42,240 --> 00:17:47,770 yesterday, if you are at this stage, you saw Gillian Oliver talking about this and 235 00:17:47,770 --> 00:17:52,660 how much infrastructure you had to run themselves, in many cases because we 236 00:17:52,660 --> 00:17:55,800 didn't win it with this consolidation, where if you want to use one service, you 237 00:17:55,800 --> 00:18:00,960 have to buy into all these other things associated with that company. All right. 238 00:18:00,960 --> 00:18:04,920 So that's one of the trade off you might have to think about when it comes to, say, 239 00:18:04,920 --> 00:18:09,350 Platform and Provisioning. Provider is also another decision that might affect 240 00:18:09,350 --> 00:18:14,650 it. Now, I didn't mention in the beginning of this talk that you can basically reduce 241 00:18:14,650 --> 00:18:20,001 emissions from what you do. If you say a cloud provide like AWS just by running it 242 00:18:20,001 --> 00:18:25,640 in a different region. So you can see this map here. This is by this person who is 243 00:18:25,640 --> 00:18:29,820 best paid by Amazon to build kind of sketch naughty things. And this is a list 244 00:18:29,820 --> 00:18:32,600 of all the data centers and you'll see the ones with the green leaves, which are 245 00:18:32,600 --> 00:18:38,450 marked as kind of sustainable regions. And you see on the right hand side on the east 246 00:18:38,450 --> 00:18:41,410 coast of America, which is around North Virginia, which has traditionally been 247 00:18:41,410 --> 00:18:46,420 coal country - you don't have much in the green regions there, but on the left hand 248 00:18:46,420 --> 00:18:50,180 side, where you see a lot of kind of leaves. And that's because on the west 249 00:18:50,180 --> 00:18:55,940 coast of America, there's a lot more hydro and things like that. So, you know, 250 00:18:55,940 --> 00:19:00,470 with kind of a lower CO2 for each kind of unit of computer that you're paying for. 251 00:19:00,470 --> 00:19:05,200 So, yes, you can reduce emissions just by switching from one region to another 252 00:19:05,200 --> 00:19:10,270 region. And this is because, basically, to expand that point I shared with you 253 00:19:10,270 --> 00:19:16,160 before, where you are in the world... like the place will affect the carbon intensity 254 00:19:16,160 --> 00:19:20,260 of the emissions that come from running infrastructure anywhere. So let's have a 255 00:19:20,260 --> 00:19:24,600 look at Europe. Right. So France kind of green full of nukes, right. So that's good 256 00:19:24,600 --> 00:19:29,731 for some people, maybe less so in Germany. Right. Germany, which is up here, this is 257 00:19:29,731 --> 00:19:34,720 the land of solar and coal. Right. So we're not all that green. England is 258 00:19:34,720 --> 00:19:38,270 actually got lit up quite a bit better than it was before. But up here, you can 259 00:19:38,270 --> 00:19:43,380 see Poland: aww, not so good. Poland is really, really into coal. And as you can 260 00:19:43,380 --> 00:19:46,760 see up here in the Nordic states where there's loads and loads of mountains and 261 00:19:46,760 --> 00:19:50,880 wind and water, that things are really, really green. And this gives you an idea 262 00:19:50,880 --> 00:19:54,170 that you can kind of see where the emission, the likely emissions might be 263 00:19:54,170 --> 00:19:57,650 depending on where you're on the world and that you might make decisions based on 264 00:19:57,650 --> 00:20:01,000 this. But to have to kind of compare against this is gonna be quite complicated 265 00:20:01,000 --> 00:20:06,290 process. So one thing that we do. All right. The Green Web Foundation, which is 266 00:20:06,290 --> 00:20:09,930 where I currently work, is we build like a directory to make it easier for you to 267 00:20:09,930 --> 00:20:14,910 make that, to do the right thing. And we present this information as an API and as 268 00:20:14,910 --> 00:20:18,200 data sets for you to kind of build into your own tool in which I'll expand a 269 00:20:18,200 --> 00:20:20,940 little bit later. But one of the key things is that your provider will actually 270 00:20:20,940 --> 00:20:26,109 have an impact on who you... basically, where something is will have an impact on 271 00:20:26,109 --> 00:20:32,160 emissions from here. There is also... At this point here I wanna segue a bit into kind of 272 00:20:32,160 --> 00:20:37,560 energy markets, because when you start working with computers and if you have to, 273 00:20:37,560 --> 00:20:41,760 if you're responsible for any service, the more you think about cloud or how to work 274 00:20:41,760 --> 00:20:46,910 with cloud, the more you realize how many parallels there are to energy markets. 275 00:20:46,910 --> 00:20:52,954 Now energy markets are really interesting in lots of strange ways, right. So in 276 00:20:52,954 --> 00:20:56,890 Europe, but actually in lots of places around the world, you can have cases where 277 00:20:56,890 --> 00:21:02,276 the cost of electricity is actually negative rather than positive. So like on 278 00:21:02,276 --> 00:21:06,580 a day where there's which is really, really sunny or really, really windy, it's 279 00:21:06,580 --> 00:21:12,340 actually cheaper for the grid to basically pay people to basically take energy off 280 00:21:12,340 --> 00:21:17,980 the grid to keep it stable than it is to say power down a nuclear power station 281 00:21:17,980 --> 00:21:21,869 or power down some kind of large coal fired power station. And then under 282 00:21:21,869 --> 00:21:25,470 assault, you end up with these scenarios where you have a negative and you have 283 00:21:25,470 --> 00:21:29,550 negative cost. And one of the reasons here is to basically get people to kind of take 284 00:21:29,550 --> 00:21:34,130 this demand and put it to use in other places. And I'm sharing this with you 285 00:21:34,130 --> 00:21:38,430 because it's the kind of the idea like shifting load might be might be something 286 00:21:38,430 --> 00:21:43,809 you're aware of as developers or trying to kind of delay jobs, for example. But you 287 00:21:43,809 --> 00:21:48,360 see this manifesting now in how we use energy, but basically things like with 288 00:21:48,360 --> 00:21:53,761 IV's and things. So this is an example: Bulb energy in the UK. They will 289 00:21:53,761 --> 00:21:57,910 basically... if you have a car, they, basically have time rest now, where 290 00:21:57,910 --> 00:22:02,710 depending on the time of day or if you're prepared to kind of provide, be a little 291 00:22:02,710 --> 00:22:06,820 bit less strict about when you need something running, then you'll get a 292 00:22:06,820 --> 00:22:12,870 cheaper electricity. And why am I sharing this with you? Because I think you start 293 00:22:12,870 --> 00:22:21,400 to see things like this in the realm of like computing now. So this is a paper 294 00:22:21,400 --> 00:22:26,780 that was shared this year, the ICT for Sustainability (ICT4S), basic conference 295 00:22:26,780 --> 00:22:31,910 in Lapperate, which I've misspelt. Sorry, Finnish people. And the general idea is 296 00:22:31,910 --> 00:22:37,440 that these people started building Kubernetes Scheduler to basically run a docker container, 297 00:22:37,440 --> 00:22:43,330 run machines, run workloads where energy was cheap and green by basically 298 00:22:43,330 --> 00:22:51,300 tracking where it was sunny really. And they were able to do this on where they 299 00:22:51,300 --> 00:22:55,200 end up working with Microsoft to do this, because Microsoft is one large company 300 00:22:55,200 --> 00:22:58,940 that has a number of data centers all around the world. But it kind of sucks 301 00:22:58,940 --> 00:23:02,770 that there's only one company that you can actually get this stuff from, or if you 302 00:23:02,770 --> 00:23:05,630 wanted to do something kind of cool with, say, a more 303 00:23:05,630 --> 00:23:10,150 decentralized use of the web that... you have to kind of go through one large 304 00:23:10,150 --> 00:23:15,740 company. And if we were to look at say, well, maybe a more kind of open, green and 305 00:23:15,740 --> 00:23:19,160 decentralized web or Internet might look like there is actually some lessons we 306 00:23:19,160 --> 00:23:24,213 could learn from the energy sector over the last, say, 10 to 20 years. So Germany, 307 00:23:24,213 --> 00:23:28,220 one thing that we saw was the Energie- wende over the last 15 years. And the 308 00:23:28,220 --> 00:23:33,170 result of that was that we had like cheap green distributed energy. So that we, 309 00:23:33,170 --> 00:23:38,502 Germany is interesting in the sense that it has quite a heterogeneous grid. So 310 00:23:38,502 --> 00:23:44,740 there's lots and lots of smaller providers of energy rather than just a handful of 311 00:23:44,740 --> 00:23:49,890 huge providers. And there's lots of reasons why having a diverse ecosystem is 312 00:23:49,890 --> 00:23:53,590 helpful in this, right. And I kind of wonder like this is one I share with you 313 00:23:53,590 --> 00:23:57,391 as an idea. What if we'd something like a digitalwende? Right. What if we could 314 00:23:57,391 --> 00:24:00,880 do something like this to, kind of, abstract computing away to the point that 315 00:24:00,880 --> 00:24:04,060 you can run these in the same way? There are companies that are now doing stuff 316 00:24:04,060 --> 00:24:07,790 like this right now. And there's one company called Helios Exchange that does 317 00:24:07,790 --> 00:24:11,580 exactly this. But the paper I showed you before, shows you this stuff around there. 318 00:24:11,580 --> 00:24:16,740 So this may provide a way away from having to rely on just basically an oligopoly and 319 00:24:16,740 --> 00:24:21,520 concentrating more power. If we were to kind of be prepared to think a bit more 320 00:24:21,520 --> 00:24:27,749 about how we run computing around. So final thing is, as this possible way of 321 00:24:27,749 --> 00:24:31,940 sharing was programing language. So where appropriate, you can have an impact here 322 00:24:31,940 --> 00:24:37,080 as well, because different languages have different goals and that can result in 323 00:24:37,080 --> 00:24:41,820 reducing emissions from just much more efficient use of resources. So this is 324 00:24:41,820 --> 00:24:46,440 Hannes Mehnert yesterday. He was presenting some work he's been doing on 325 00:24:46,440 --> 00:24:50,880 MirageOS unikernels. All right. And whether you probably can't see it. He was 326 00:24:50,880 --> 00:24:54,490 basically making the point that this is how he used running this stuff before. 327 00:24:54,490 --> 00:24:59,890 When he switched to using unikernels, he saw memory usage and CPU dropped massively 328 00:24:59,890 --> 00:25:05,130 by just having a kind of better use of the existing resources. So this was like a 25 329 00:25:05,130 --> 00:25:11,919 fold decrease in compute use and a 10 times decrease in like RAM usage. And you 330 00:25:11,919 --> 00:25:16,750 see the same things with other computing, other languages. And the nice thing is 331 00:25:16,750 --> 00:25:20,780 this is recorded now so you can see it too tomorrow. All right. But there's also 332 00:25:20,780 --> 00:25:26,345 papers that talk all about this stuff. So depending on what your goals might be, 333 00:25:26,345 --> 00:25:30,960 there may be certain languages which are really better kind of optimized for the 334 00:25:30,960 --> 00:25:34,929 task that you might actually have. Now, does this mean that I'm saying that we 335 00:25:34,929 --> 00:25:39,343 should all go out and code everything in Ocaml, C and Rust? No, that's a really, 336 00:25:39,343 --> 00:25:44,640 really... we choose languages for a wide range of reasons from ecosystem to hiring, 337 00:25:44,640 --> 00:25:49,370 to like developer happiness. And when you look at a project or a product level, 338 00:25:49,370 --> 00:25:52,940 you'll see that these kind of micro optimizations, more than fun, might not be 339 00:25:52,940 --> 00:25:57,102 the most effective way to achieve some emissions reductions. But it's still out 340 00:25:57,102 --> 00:26:00,760 there and it's worth being aware of. And also, it's worth thinking about if you are 341 00:26:00,760 --> 00:26:05,870 able to kind of think about the entire stack of tools you might be using, then 342 00:26:05,870 --> 00:26:10,530 you're kind of doing something like this in many cases. If you say use like Redis 343 00:26:10,530 --> 00:26:16,292 or nginx or something to serve things. So that's the idea for, like, platform. Now 344 00:26:16,292 --> 00:26:19,520 let's talk about packets. So this is... I've spoken of infrastructure you control, 345 00:26:19,520 --> 00:26:24,450 this is infrastructure you do not control. All right? Now, you cannot really control 346 00:26:24,450 --> 00:26:27,130 the other parts of the Internet, and that's generally considered a good thing. 347 00:26:27,130 --> 00:26:31,731 But what you can do is control how much data you send over the wire instead, allright. 348 00:26:31,731 --> 00:26:37,700 And if we were to kind of look at, say, the amount of energy we sent over the 349 00:26:37,700 --> 00:26:41,850 wire and we figured out that both sending data uses infrastructure, it uses energy, 350 00:26:41,850 --> 00:26:46,059 which uses fossil fuels. Then we've got some bad news, like we've seen pages 351 00:26:46,059 --> 00:26:50,580 growing in size to the point that in average they... I think the mean web page 352 00:26:50,580 --> 00:26:55,407 size is now larger than the original download of Doom. All right. But we're 353 00:26:55,407 --> 00:26:59,520 also seeing it, because we have mobile phones, so we use this more. All right. 354 00:26:59,520 --> 00:27:02,970 And then because cellular network tend to use more energy to shift the same amount 355 00:27:02,970 --> 00:27:08,460 of data as, say, wired or Wi-Fi networks, we have a loss here. So from a kind 356 00:27:08,460 --> 00:27:13,059 of energy and climate point of view, this is like the worst scenario we can imagine 357 00:27:13,059 --> 00:27:18,270 right now. Thankfully, there are this, if we think about Web page budgets as 358 00:27:18,270 --> 00:27:22,290 basically carbon budgets, we realize we have lots of tools that we can repurpose 359 00:27:22,290 --> 00:27:26,820 for carbon reductions. So one example is Google's Lighthouse. It basically runs 360 00:27:26,820 --> 00:27:31,418 checks against your page, then it grades you on how well your page is optimized. So 361 00:27:31,418 --> 00:27:34,600 what we've been doing at the Green Web Foundation is taken Lighthouse, we 362 00:27:34,600 --> 00:27:39,370 forked it and we made Greenhouse. Which was basically the same idea, but it kind 363 00:27:39,370 --> 00:27:44,285 of looks at how many resources you run and then says, well, yeah, climate emergency 364 00:27:44,285 --> 00:27:48,432 folks, maybe you don't want to get all your stuff from fossil fuels. And there's 365 00:27:48,432 --> 00:27:51,424 some other things far worse than we can make it, kind of, work out the carbon 366 00:27:51,424 --> 00:27:56,290 footprint from this, because these numbers exist, but that's further down the line. 367 00:27:56,290 --> 00:28:00,192 But you can also see that I'm referring to the ethical web principles here. If you 368 00:28:00,192 --> 00:28:05,340 care about this as a professional, this is something that the creators of the web are 369 00:28:05,340 --> 00:28:08,669 now saying and giving you license to be doing. If you do say, look, I don't want 370 00:28:08,669 --> 00:28:11,776 to do this, there is a moral argument for doing this. And if I want to build the 371 00:28:11,776 --> 00:28:17,608 web, as Tim intended, then you can refer back to these ethical principles now for 372 00:28:17,608 --> 00:28:22,240 this. But I will need to share with you that that doesn't mean that we should just 373 00:28:22,240 --> 00:28:26,100 like reader optimize every single web page and they'll be fine. Right. It's worth 374 00:28:26,100 --> 00:28:30,620 getting a sense of perspective around this. All right. Video like, video just 375 00:28:30,620 --> 00:28:34,510 dwarfed web traffic. When we think about designs, we might make like to give you 376 00:28:34,510 --> 00:28:39,799 some context. This chart is just showing you an idea of where like usage of 377 00:28:39,799 --> 00:28:45,320 like data flows. Right. Now, 60 percent of this basically is just telling us that all 378 00:28:45,320 --> 00:28:50,494 the video used and streamed is about 300 kind of megatons of CO2. And that was what 379 00:28:50,494 --> 00:28:54,191 it was in 2018, which is roughly the carbon footprint of Spain. All right. So 380 00:28:54,191 --> 00:28:57,590 all the video = Spain, that's kind of numbers and numbers you might want to look 381 00:28:57,590 --> 00:29:01,720 at. Now, video on demand like, say, Netflix and stuff - just like the country 382 00:29:01,720 --> 00:29:06,596 of Chile. Porn - that's like Austria. All right. So these are some kind of like 383 00:29:06,596 --> 00:29:12,610 reference points is for you to kind of refer to now. All right. And I speak about 384 00:29:12,610 --> 00:29:16,450 that process now. And like, this is why it's worth thinking about some other thing. 385 00:29:16,450 --> 00:29:19,830 This is why I also care about kind of making the web green, because I think it's going to 386 00:29:19,830 --> 00:29:23,250 be easier to make the entire Internet green than it is to stop people watching 387 00:29:23,250 --> 00:29:28,971 porn, basically, which is a statement, I suppose. So I spoke a bit about the 388 00:29:28,971 --> 00:29:34,820 process and how there are other things you can do outside of computers. All right. So 389 00:29:34,820 --> 00:29:38,257 they are obvious. There's two ways I'm going to show this. So there's kind of 390 00:29:38,257 --> 00:29:41,330 inward looking at process, like the greening of how we build digital products. 391 00:29:41,330 --> 00:29:44,210 Right. This isn't visible to the end users, but it's still a useful thing to 392 00:29:44,210 --> 00:29:50,821 do. Now, an example of this is the company called WHOLEGRAINDigital. I really admire 393 00:29:50,821 --> 00:29:54,650 that. They're really really cool company doing some good stuff on the web and they 394 00:29:54,650 --> 00:29:58,140 are one of the original kind of WordPress agencies and they basically say, yes, we 395 00:29:58,140 --> 00:30:01,250 do everything with WordPress and green energy and they started working at their 396 00:30:01,250 --> 00:30:08,049 own missions and blogging about this. And what they said was that they know, that 397 00:30:08,049 --> 00:30:11,340 they looked at these figures and they switched to running on green infra because 398 00:30:11,340 --> 00:30:13,600 that was the kind of right thing for them to do. But when I started doing that, they 399 00:30:13,600 --> 00:30:17,442 started looking at where else are their emissions and what they do. And they 400 00:30:17,442 --> 00:30:20,281 basically looked at and some realized that, oh, wow, a large part of their 401 00:30:20,281 --> 00:30:23,420 emissions just comes from travel. And you guys, you can see office and home energy. 402 00:30:23,420 --> 00:30:28,996 And of the travel, around 94 percent of their emissions came from commuting. So 403 00:30:28,996 --> 00:30:32,327 this is why I'm saying that it's more than just playing around with computers and 404 00:30:32,327 --> 00:30:37,577 optimizing stuff. All right. So this was kind of useful and this kind of inspired 405 00:30:37,577 --> 00:30:43,380 some of the work agreement foundation for us to start sharing this. And what we've 406 00:30:43,380 --> 00:30:49,309 been doing recently is basically take this model and build some, like I guess in VCC, 407 00:30:49,309 --> 00:30:53,370 which is I'm afraid is minimum viable carbon calculator, not the post-growth, 408 00:30:53,370 --> 00:30:59,410 other kind of acronym there. And we basically built like a simple spreadsheet 409 00:30:59,410 --> 00:31:03,260 that is very, very fast to fill out. So we picked two people to kind of get an idea 410 00:31:03,260 --> 00:31:08,100 of, okay. These are the things I'm paying to run. This is the like if I build a web 411 00:31:08,100 --> 00:31:11,710 project, this is how much data I'm shifting over time. And then because it 412 00:31:11,710 --> 00:31:16,900 turns out that it uses energy to keep people warm and dry inside buildings and 413 00:31:16,900 --> 00:31:21,110 people tend to use energy commuting. Then we tracked it, we tracked that as well. 414 00:31:21,110 --> 00:31:25,700 And we do this to give people some figures and get some idea of where they might want 415 00:31:25,700 --> 00:31:30,580 to act upon this, because the current ways that you report on, say, emissions or 416 00:31:30,580 --> 00:31:34,160 think about this is like an annual report every year. That's a really, really slow 417 00:31:34,160 --> 00:31:39,321 debugging cycle. That means we have like eight or nine kind of hits of the F5 key 418 00:31:39,321 --> 00:31:44,010 before, like it's a climate apocalypse. That feels like we should all do a little 419 00:31:44,010 --> 00:31:47,800 better than that. But this is entirely open, you can link to the template 420 00:31:47,800 --> 00:31:51,820 yourself. And we've we learnt some interesting things and we did this. We 421 00:31:51,820 --> 00:31:55,790 realized that when we were working on this because the team were pretty good on 422 00:31:55,790 --> 00:32:00,490 commuting the let them cycle to work. They were emissions are quite low there. But we 423 00:32:00,490 --> 00:32:05,230 also realized that there was actually an argument for changing how we design, say, 424 00:32:05,230 --> 00:32:09,370 a Web site. We found that one chunky background video, you know, those things 425 00:32:09,370 --> 00:32:13,490 that we all hate. Right. That had the same carbon footprint as basically the entire 426 00:32:13,490 --> 00:32:17,540 team commuting for the entire project. All right. So it's quite easy to make an 427 00:32:17,540 --> 00:32:23,429 argument to get rid of that and it kind of meaningful, measurable reduction there. So 428 00:32:23,429 --> 00:32:27,720 these are some of the stuff that we do now in this. The other thing is an outward 429 00:32:27,720 --> 00:32:32,640 process. So these might be decisions you make that affect the kind of emissions 430 00:32:32,640 --> 00:32:37,160 through use or for your end users. And these are gonna be much more visible to 431 00:32:37,160 --> 00:32:42,169 end users. The example I like to refer to, because I'm a fan of the company. is 432 00:32:42,169 --> 00:32:46,169 Fairphone. You folks have heard a Fairphone here, right? Yeah. Like they're 433 00:32:46,169 --> 00:32:49,340 basically the canonical Fairtrade smart smartphone, really. All right. That's the 434 00:32:49,340 --> 00:32:51,960 best way to describe them. And they also... there's lots of good things about 435 00:32:51,960 --> 00:32:55,590 what they do, but they also share lots of information about their own carbon 436 00:32:55,590 --> 00:32:59,429 emissions and what steps they're trying to take to reduce them in a relatively honest 437 00:32:59,429 --> 00:33:02,960 way, which is also really good. And because they publish it, we can read it. 438 00:33:02,960 --> 00:33:07,640 Now, we've seen trends in electronics over the last, say, five or six years where we 439 00:33:07,640 --> 00:33:12,299 had modular things and we saw a few failed attempts at having modular smartphones. 440 00:33:12,299 --> 00:33:16,240 We've been a shift towards like systems on a chip and stuff like that. So if you are 441 00:33:16,240 --> 00:33:19,910 going to do that, that means in some way that having a modular design is a 442 00:33:19,910 --> 00:33:25,059 challenge. But it means that if most of the energy or impact on building 443 00:33:25,059 --> 00:33:29,740 electronics is coming from basically turning sand into a chip with lots, lots 444 00:33:29,740 --> 00:33:33,820 of energy then we'll need to think about where we might have a way to decouple this 445 00:33:33,820 --> 00:33:39,190 from the rest of it. All right. To make us the electronics we do have last longer. 446 00:33:39,190 --> 00:33:44,740 All right. And this is what I found in there, over LCA life CO2-analysis report, 447 00:33:44,740 --> 00:33:48,730 where they look at the emissions over the entire process. They... basically the 448 00:33:48,730 --> 00:33:53,480 first thing is their actual use is pretty small for this. But what you can see here 449 00:33:53,480 --> 00:34:00,320 - the emissions were from the production. And the thing they decide to do was make 450 00:34:00,320 --> 00:34:06,570 the phone as easy as possible to repair for end users or replace parts of it. To 451 00:34:06,570 --> 00:34:09,639 make it go from, say, a 5-years project product to a sort... from a 3-years 452 00:34:09,639 --> 00:34:13,419 product to a 5-years product. And this had the impact of reducing the emissions by a 453 00:34:13,419 --> 00:34:18,260 measurable figure. And it's a pattern that we might follow ourselves. All right. Now, 454 00:34:18,260 --> 00:34:21,190 actually. Fairphone and it make a real feature of this now, they've talked about 455 00:34:21,190 --> 00:34:27,000 this to their, kind of, audience. So they basically say if you can just say upgrade 456 00:34:27,000 --> 00:34:30,560 just the camera rather than the rest of the phone, that is still kind of working, 457 00:34:30,560 --> 00:34:33,700 then you can reduce the carbon footprint over the lifetime by these kind of 458 00:34:33,700 --> 00:34:38,340 figures. And I think this is actually worth sharing because it hints that there 459 00:34:38,340 --> 00:34:41,580 are options for us to actually be doing something until we can run everything on 460 00:34:41,580 --> 00:34:46,609 green power, which would affect these numbers. And I think I've shared with you 461 00:34:46,609 --> 00:34:51,550 like a mental model and see how it can be activated. I've spoken with you about kind 462 00:34:51,550 --> 00:34:55,639 of carbon. Now I'm just gonna give you some steps of where to go next. So, okay. 463 00:34:55,639 --> 00:35:01,590 It's 2020. Right. And I kind of feel this feels like this table stakes. And I'm 464 00:35:01,590 --> 00:35:04,930 really glad that at least one person is taking photos of this. I'd really like it, 465 00:35:04,930 --> 00:35:09,170 if more of you to take some photos of this and share with your peers, because I think 466 00:35:09,170 --> 00:35:12,820 the single most effective thing we can use in community is stuff like this. All 467 00:35:12,820 --> 00:35:15,450 right. We would expect we need to kind of make this just... we need to change the 468 00:35:15,450 --> 00:35:18,560 static about how we build things. So in the same way that we would expect a 469 00:35:18,560 --> 00:35:22,420 builder to know about asbestos and we expect automotive engineers to know about 470 00:35:22,420 --> 00:35:26,060 lead poisoning in particulars. I think as professionals we need to know about the 471 00:35:26,060 --> 00:35:29,650 impact of carbon and what we do and that we don't need it to build digital 472 00:35:29,650 --> 00:35:32,990 services. And I think if we can build electric cars in the automotive center, 473 00:35:32,990 --> 00:35:36,210 then we can build green stacks in technology. And I think we need this to 474 00:35:36,210 --> 00:35:39,869 become the norm. So this is what I need. I need your help me to share this with your 475 00:35:39,869 --> 00:35:43,420 boss, with your coworker. Set something like this. We've had people talk about 476 00:35:43,420 --> 00:35:47,630 just how bad the situation is. And like this is really like one of the minimum 477 00:35:47,630 --> 00:35:52,950 things we can do. Which doesn't actually have a massive cost for us, as you do. So 478 00:35:52,950 --> 00:35:56,960 if we do, we need something like a cloud moonshot to get off fossil fuels. And this 479 00:35:56,960 --> 00:36:01,960 is one thing I really would ask you to really consider. So asking for this is a 480 00:36:01,960 --> 00:36:06,770 bit easier if you have friends. So I'm in a group called ClimateAction.tech, where 481 00:36:06,770 --> 00:36:10,609 it's basically just a slack group with a few other things that we now run from 482 00:36:10,609 --> 00:36:14,180 here, on meet ups. And the idea is that we do this to kind of share what the 483 00:36:14,180 --> 00:36:18,051 strategies are to actually kind of push for this kind of stuff, because not 484 00:36:18,051 --> 00:36:22,000 everyone can join Extinction Rebellion. And I'm not sure that everyone should join 485 00:36:22,000 --> 00:36:27,660 Extinction Rebellion. They used that we have different aspects of ourselves that 486 00:36:27,660 --> 00:36:33,280 we bring in our work compared to where else we might work. Now if you are 487 00:36:33,280 --> 00:36:37,950 interested in acting upon any of this. I work at Agreement Foundation and we 488 00:36:37,950 --> 00:36:41,160 provide, we have like an open source platform where you can check your stack 489 00:36:41,160 --> 00:36:46,721 and then the tools you have to do this. And if you are interested about any of 490 00:36:46,721 --> 00:36:50,780 this stuff, we are trying to find a way to make it easier or to make some of this 491 00:36:50,780 --> 00:36:54,340 much more transparent, because I shared with you before about how large companies 492 00:36:54,340 --> 00:36:58,730 can basically fudge some of the numbers to make them look greener than they otherwise 493 00:36:58,730 --> 00:37:03,740 might be. So tomorrow we're running a kind of on lecture room M2. We're running 494 00:37:03,740 --> 00:37:06,170 something like a workshop to figure out what some of this might look like in the 495 00:37:06,170 --> 00:37:11,660 same way that we set up robots.txt. So carbon.txt a way to verify this. There's a 496 00:37:11,660 --> 00:37:15,250 Web site that that's been hastily put together to give you some idea for this. 497 00:37:15,250 --> 00:37:19,390 And finally, I'm just gonna wrap up now. Thank you for letting me talk to you about 498 00:37:19,390 --> 00:37:23,590 this stuff here. If you're interested in getting in touch and talk to me, please do 499 00:37:23,590 --> 00:37:29,010 the Green Web Foundation. I'm Mr. Chris Adams on Twitter and GitHub. We're asked 500 00:37:29,010 --> 00:37:32,960 to do some training around this because we realize that although most of us do care, 501 00:37:32,960 --> 00:37:38,600 we don't have much ways to act upon this kind of stuff. Then finally, if you find 502 00:37:38,600 --> 00:37:41,980 this interesting, there's a newsletter which I've started with a friend of mine, 503 00:37:41,980 --> 00:37:45,369 Martin, where we're basically sharing what we learn as we go through it, which bits 504 00:37:45,369 --> 00:37:51,820 are hard, which bits aren't so hard. And yeah. Thank you everyone! 505 00:37:51,820 --> 00:38:01,890 *applause* 506 00:38:01,890 --> 00:38:08,380 Herald: Thank you very much. We do have plenty of time for Q&A. Nonetheless, I 507 00:38:08,380 --> 00:38:13,930 would like the Q&A to be of high quality. So when you ask a question, it should be a 508 00:38:13,930 --> 00:38:19,060 question. Thanking the speaker is lovely and nice, but don't waste our collective 509 00:38:19,060 --> 00:38:24,180 bandwidth on that and do that afterwards on your own. And I don't really care what 510 00:38:24,180 --> 00:38:27,730 your name is or what your affiliation is. Just ask a question, and make it short and 511 00:38:27,730 --> 00:38:30,340 so on. And the first two questions go to the Internet. 512 00:38:30,340 --> 00:38:35,840 Signal Angel: You've mentioned the preview for other workshop, a carbon.txt just now. 513 00:38:35,840 --> 00:38:40,599 Can you already share some strategies how, for example, the Green Web Foundation and 514 00:38:40,599 --> 00:38:46,110 other sites directories can protect themselves against being abused by 515 00:38:46,110 --> 00:38:47,870 companies, for example, through greenwashing. 516 00:38:47,870 --> 00:38:55,460 Chris: So I think... you just need to read some reports about this kind of stuff. And 517 00:38:55,460 --> 00:38:58,610 get familiar with this. Now, I really apologize - a large bunch of this was 518 00:38:58,610 --> 00:39:02,329 incredibly dry. There was lots and lots of dry material around this to, actually, 519 00:39:02,329 --> 00:39:06,700 figure this stuff out. I think it's mainly a case of working out what numbers you... 520 00:39:06,700 --> 00:39:10,250 what questions you might actually have to ask. And I can share a link specifically 521 00:39:10,250 --> 00:39:14,350 for the questions that you need to ask. But generally, I think the four things I 522 00:39:14,350 --> 00:39:19,810 would look for: if the organization hasn't made a public statement about when they're 523 00:39:19,810 --> 00:39:24,099 going to hit zero emissions; if they're not sharing their progress on an annual 524 00:39:24,099 --> 00:39:31,760 basis; if they're not sharing how much of their business they get from basically the 525 00:39:31,760 --> 00:39:36,150 from fossil fuels right now; then how much of their business is still involved in 526 00:39:36,150 --> 00:39:40,100 extracting fossil fuels from the ground. I think these are the key things and if 527 00:39:40,100 --> 00:39:42,650 they're not using this kind of scoped emissions process, which is a clear thing 528 00:39:42,650 --> 00:39:47,780 of finding numbers, those are the biggest ones. There is a page on that I've got 529 00:39:47,780 --> 00:39:52,310 which lists these questions to ask and I'll share link to everyone since I get on 530 00:39:52,310 --> 00:39:58,590 the webs to link to this. Signal Angel: And the second question from 531 00:39:58,590 --> 00:40:03,980 IRC: The numbers that you've mentioned that the companies themselves publish. Can 532 00:40:03,980 --> 00:40:08,240 you verify them? And if yes, how? Chris: So the thing that you can... Oh, 533 00:40:08,240 --> 00:40:09,980 that's the thing is - independent verification is the thing you need to ask 534 00:40:09,980 --> 00:40:12,560 for, it's the final one. So I have just finally seen where the voice is coming 535 00:40:12,560 --> 00:40:17,340 from. It's like the voice of God speaking. The independent verification is very 536 00:40:17,340 --> 00:40:24,070 important. All the examples I pointed to, had independent verification, usually from 537 00:40:24,070 --> 00:40:29,020 a set of companies that do auditing of this kind of stuff. Now there is again, 538 00:40:29,020 --> 00:40:32,150 there's a firewall of tedium around this stuff, like that thing where I showed you 539 00:40:32,150 --> 00:40:36,780 with a Google with Google's numbers being high and low. This is because you need to 540 00:40:36,780 --> 00:40:39,510 kind of go into the minutiae of understanding market based reporting, 541 00:40:39,510 --> 00:40:42,339 because location based reporting and there's reporting around this stuff, 542 00:40:42,339 --> 00:40:46,270 there's like lots of academic literature, but there's just not very accessible to 543 00:40:46,270 --> 00:40:51,650 lots of people right now. They need to be more of us who do do this stuff. This is 544 00:40:51,650 --> 00:40:54,940 partly one of the reasons we want to have something like carbon.txt was to basically 545 00:40:54,940 --> 00:40:58,960 give people a chance to see this, but also linked to the specific documentation 546 00:40:58,960 --> 00:41:03,960 they're referring to. So you can ask. Okay. So it's nice you've done this. But 547 00:41:03,960 --> 00:41:05,890 whereas this was a third party verification of this or why is the same 548 00:41:05,890 --> 00:41:10,860 guy called Trevor being basically audited all of these companies and like literally 549 00:41:10,860 --> 00:41:14,930 it's the same dude who's reported Amazon's and Apple's. And I'm not sure about 550 00:41:14,930 --> 00:41:19,109 Google. Right. But Trevor is probably a good guy. But the fact that there is only 551 00:41:19,109 --> 00:41:23,580 one person doing this is kind of... come on, we know that there are things that 552 00:41:23,580 --> 00:41:28,610 you probably don't want to do in this field. Also in Europe, at least, if you 553 00:41:28,610 --> 00:41:32,330 want to sell renewable energy, you do need to register this with the government 554 00:41:32,330 --> 00:41:37,001 registry. And there is something in there... I didn't really talk about this 555 00:41:37,001 --> 00:41:41,430 in the session. The aim is talk about more in carbon.txt, how to find this and how to 556 00:41:41,430 --> 00:41:45,820 look this up. Basically, everything we know about SSL and DNS, you can apply that 557 00:41:45,820 --> 00:41:50,300 to solve this kind of problem without needing a freaking block chain. All right. 558 00:41:50,300 --> 00:41:53,110 And you can actually find something useful here, right? Like this data is out there. 559 00:41:53,110 --> 00:41:56,470 It's just the we need to better know the right questions to ask and make sure that, 560 00:41:56,470 --> 00:41:59,770 well, we are running stuff on a green stack rather than a brown stack. 561 00:41:59,770 --> 00:42:04,090 Herald: Ok. Microphone number 6, state your question. 562 00:42:04,090 --> 00:42:08,440 Mic6: Hello and thanks. Very good. Thanks for your great talk. 563 00:42:08,440 --> 00:42:10,830 Herald: I've said something about thanking the speaker before. 564 00:42:10,830 --> 00:42:15,349 Mic6: I know. That's why I said it. I understand you could try to convince 565 00:42:15,349 --> 00:42:20,060 people to reduce their carbon emissions. Now the managers I have been working under 566 00:42:20,060 --> 00:42:25,710 are generally good in reducing cost. Do you think it would help to translate 567 00:42:25,710 --> 00:42:31,790 carbon emissions into cost and have this problem solved by the invisible hand? 568 00:42:31,790 --> 00:42:36,849 Chris: So this is actually the approach that Amazon use. And for some of the 569 00:42:36,849 --> 00:42:40,840 spreadsheets I've showed you before where we do not have numbers forecast for 570 00:42:40,840 --> 00:42:45,430 emission, for reported emissions, the best thing you can go on is going to be sector 571 00:42:45,430 --> 00:42:51,231 level averages for the carbon intensity of spending a 1000 pounds or 1000 euros in a 572 00:42:51,231 --> 00:42:56,100 particular area. So you might look at it like that. I kind of feel that there are 573 00:42:56,100 --> 00:43:02,420 certain people who really respond to this kind of like cost base messaging. But I 574 00:43:02,420 --> 00:43:05,900 think it's more attractive for us to kind of change the aesthetic around what we do 575 00:43:05,900 --> 00:43:10,400 so rather than us continually striving. I mean, if we had the narrative for people 576 00:43:10,400 --> 00:43:14,330 for our generation was to basically save the planet, that feels a much more 577 00:43:14,330 --> 00:43:19,210 attractive thing than using cost. But I do... I'm aware that if you are in an 578 00:43:19,210 --> 00:43:24,760 organization where the primary driver is cost, then you need to be able to use that 579 00:43:24,760 --> 00:43:28,300 language. And that's why we've been speaking about some of that. But there are 580 00:43:28,300 --> 00:43:33,650 lots and lots... there's actually stuff in this field to show this. There are 581 00:43:33,650 --> 00:43:38,240 organizations that will basically help you quantify the risks from doing nothing 582 00:43:38,240 --> 00:43:42,500 versus the cost of action. Because in many cases, when we talk about this, we think 583 00:43:42,500 --> 00:43:47,470 that we often use... you hear the phrase: "Well, what's it going to cost to shift to 584 00:43:47,470 --> 00:43:52,240 kind of green energy?", for example. But it's like - what we pretend is there is no 585 00:43:52,240 --> 00:43:56,780 cost to inaction, when it really, really is. And we've seen just the five years 586 00:43:56,780 --> 00:44:01,160 massive, massive changes in the destruction of companies and industries 587 00:44:01,160 --> 00:44:07,340 and, well, hundreds and hundreds of lives as well. So I think that you can use costs 588 00:44:07,340 --> 00:44:11,660 for this, but I think it's a bit reductive to only use costs. 589 00:44:11,660 --> 00:44:20,290 Herald: Shall be microphone number 2. Mic2: You in your research, did you 590 00:44:20,290 --> 00:44:25,910 encounter a tradeoff between privacy and security and carbon neutrality? And if 591 00:44:25,910 --> 00:44:30,740 yes, in which cases? Chris: Yes. In fact, I used to work at a 592 00:44:30,740 --> 00:44:35,810 company, Amy. One of the key ideas behind the company was that if you can understand 593 00:44:35,810 --> 00:44:39,270 the company's CO2 emissions, you can understand the supply chain. And if you 594 00:44:39,270 --> 00:44:43,480 understand the supply chain, then in some ways you can use it as a kind of cost to 595 00:44:43,480 --> 00:44:47,390 kind of beaten organization to reduce their prices, because you can see that 596 00:44:47,390 --> 00:44:50,920 they're much more wasteful compared to other ones. But at the same time, this 597 00:44:50,920 --> 00:44:55,550 is... so that works at an organizational level. There's also a personal aspect to 598 00:44:55,550 --> 00:45:01,170 this. And I think that this is a field that in many cases is focusing on 599 00:45:01,170 --> 00:45:06,690 individual action and kind of shaming people has been proven not to be very, 600 00:45:06,690 --> 00:45:09,440 very effective. But that doesn't mean that you shouldn't do anything, that there 601 00:45:09,440 --> 00:45:13,930 isn't a cause for individual action, because I think that provides the cover 602 00:45:13,930 --> 00:45:17,450 for politicians to make the decisions which will result in kind of real 603 00:45:17,450 --> 00:45:22,090 meaningful changes. So there is a tradeoff, because in order for you to 604 00:45:22,090 --> 00:45:25,790 understand emissions, because basically emissions are essentially a proxy for 605 00:45:25,790 --> 00:45:30,950 activity and you will usually see this and there are plenty of stories around this 606 00:45:30,950 --> 00:45:35,349 and hopefully there might even be a topic about this specific subject on Republica, 607 00:45:35,349 --> 00:45:40,070 in May. Because, yeah, there is lots of interesting literature around this 608 00:45:40,070 --> 00:45:44,690 tradeoff that we do actually have to make. Herald: Microphone number 1. 609 00:45:44,690 --> 00:45:51,430 Mic1: Hi. Can you make an educated guess on how much emissions could be spared if 610 00:45:51,430 --> 00:45:57,010 like the big providers would follow your advice? 611 00:45:57,010 --> 00:46:02,860 Chris: So I guess it's tied to the, you know... I've showed you the numbers of 612 00:46:02,860 --> 00:46:06,840 Google like that different kind of charts. Right. You could make the list, kind of 613 00:46:06,840 --> 00:46:13,130 like coyork??... just cheat argument. You say, well, maybe all of it. Right. But I 614 00:46:13,130 --> 00:46:16,910 don't think that's really accurate. Generally, if we are looking at just the 615 00:46:16,910 --> 00:46:20,220 CO2 emissions from just like running the Internet, right. I reckon you could 616 00:46:20,220 --> 00:46:30,920 probably wipe out two thirds to 80 percent of it, what actually depends on where you 617 00:46:30,920 --> 00:46:34,760 might be looking at this, actually. So more than half comfortably. All right. 618 00:46:34,760 --> 00:46:42,480 Because if you look at, say, data centers, the main driver there, the main source of 619 00:46:42,480 --> 00:46:46,000 emissions is from them being on 24/7, continually use like three quarters of the 620 00:46:46,000 --> 00:46:50,119 emissions, assuming that data centers are full of servers which are used for three 621 00:46:50,119 --> 00:46:54,950 to five years, which is common. I'm not sure this is the case. Please talk to me 622 00:46:54,950 --> 00:46:57,110 if that's not the case, because I hear rumors that that might not be the case at 623 00:46:57,110 --> 00:47:01,100 large companies, but no one will write this down. So until you know that I can't 624 00:47:01,100 --> 00:47:04,890 give you a really educated, a really kind of better guess than that, but it'll be 625 00:47:04,890 --> 00:47:08,980 lovely to find out if that data exists and there are lot of hackers who might get to 626 00:47:08,980 --> 00:47:12,980 know about this kind of stuff. Herald: Microphone number 4. 627 00:47:12,980 --> 00:47:16,620 Mic4: When you talk about moving computation around the globe, basically 628 00:47:16,620 --> 00:47:20,150 cause to the weather. I wonder if there isn't a lot of overhead associated with 629 00:47:20,150 --> 00:47:23,390 that, like additional communication. Maybe if you know, you're far away from a 630 00:47:23,390 --> 00:47:26,380 database, you need rooting hops or whatsoever. Do you know anything about 631 00:47:26,380 --> 00:47:29,200 that? Chris: Yes, I spoke to the guy to Alan 632 00:47:29,200 --> 00:47:34,510 James, who was actually working on that. And I said, hey - what you said, I said, 633 00:47:34,510 --> 00:47:38,859 yeah, we take that into account because we can work out the emissions from moving a 634 00:47:38,859 --> 00:47:43,980 container of this size to over there. And in many cases, we might move to the state 635 00:47:43,980 --> 00:47:48,410 that we watch you when a query there as well. So his approach was to basically 636 00:47:48,410 --> 00:47:53,020 apply various kinds of metadata tags to the kind of jobs you might want to run to 637 00:47:53,020 --> 00:47:57,690 provide this kind of flexibility. And this is not new idea like a Mastodon ... is a 638 00:47:57,690 --> 00:48:00,250 kind of data science company that started doing something like this 10 years ago. 639 00:48:00,250 --> 00:48:06,020 They're kind of the ... Green Cloud people doing this kind of stuff. And even 640 00:48:06,020 --> 00:48:09,250 before then, there's this phrase called "chasing the moon". Where was this idea that 641 00:48:09,250 --> 00:48:13,790 you can do this if you run stuff on the dark side of Earth, which sounds super 642 00:48:13,790 --> 00:48:18,990 metal. Right. There is... this is not a new concept, really, but it is cool. 643 00:48:18,990 --> 00:48:26,270 Herald: Microphone number five, please. Mic5: Hi. Do you see any chance of getting 644 00:48:26,270 --> 00:48:29,619 governmental support with this, for example, like with tax cuts for electronic 645 00:48:29,619 --> 00:48:32,540 cars? I mean, maybe it would be possible in here, too. 646 00:48:32,540 --> 00:48:37,500 Chris: Yes. I was actually at the EU Commission Green Public Procurement 647 00:48:37,500 --> 00:48:41,810 workshops. They've been doing for the last like few months. And I was... there were a 648 00:48:41,810 --> 00:48:44,890 tiny number of people from small companies. There were lots of large, large 649 00:48:44,890 --> 00:48:48,490 companies who were there saying, yes, they think you should do is move to our cloud. 650 00:48:48,490 --> 00:48:52,930 That's the clear solution to the climate crisis. But they actually, it does look 651 00:48:52,930 --> 00:48:59,010 like there is guidance and there is going to be support in this field. All right. So 652 00:48:59,010 --> 00:49:01,880 I do know there's going to be... well, we've already seen this like we've seen 653 00:49:01,880 --> 00:49:05,780 the European Parliament declare climate emergency saying: we need to halve 654 00:49:05,780 --> 00:49:13,170 emissions by 2030. That's around 8%, year on year for the next 10 years. Now, most 655 00:49:13,170 --> 00:49:17,000 of us don't know what that looks like because the last time you saw 8% drop in a 656 00:49:17,000 --> 00:49:21,130 single year was the collapse of the Soviet Union. Which is partly why I'm kind of 657 00:49:21,130 --> 00:49:24,900 sharing stuff like this, because I think the idea of having a more managed 658 00:49:24,900 --> 00:49:31,050 reduction of emissions feels more kind of conducive to I guess a kind of 659 00:49:31,050 --> 00:49:36,630 continuities of how we live than the collapse of the Soviet Union. So I think 660 00:49:36,630 --> 00:49:40,410 there is stuff out there. But in many cases, we don't have the knowledge right 661 00:49:40,410 --> 00:49:44,380 now as people in the sector to know what is effective. And this is something that 662 00:49:44,380 --> 00:49:49,430 we need to, as professionals, learn, to learn where the levers are if we want to 663 00:49:49,430 --> 00:49:55,430 consider ourselves as professionals facing the scale of the challenge that is ahead 664 00:49:55,430 --> 00:49:59,520 of us. Herald: Microphone number two, please. 665 00:49:59,520 --> 00:50:04,849 Mic2: Hello. So my question is about you talked a lot about how much a carbon 666 00:50:04,849 --> 00:50:10,410 emission happens because of running a server in the server side. But if the 667 00:50:10,410 --> 00:50:13,990 traffic goes really, really high in a real larger scale, you might have a lots of 668 00:50:13,990 --> 00:50:17,460 emission just because of their transmitting the package through the 669 00:50:17,460 --> 00:50:25,680 datacenter from and ... and backbones plus like there carbon emission from rendering 670 00:50:25,680 --> 00:50:30,630 the page in the like formZ and everything around that. Is there... I was looking for 671 00:50:30,630 --> 00:50:34,960 it for a while, but I couldn't find a number like saying okay, one TB of traffic 672 00:50:34,960 --> 00:50:40,250 in the data center from United States going to cause like this much of carbon. 673 00:50:40,250 --> 00:50:44,680 Chris: Yeah. Is that your question? What is the carbon footprint of a gigabyte of 674 00:50:44,680 --> 00:50:46,830 data or something? Mic2: I want to have some numbers saying 675 00:50:46,830 --> 00:50:51,030 like which one is like translate traffic to a number. 676 00:50:51,030 --> 00:50:54,040 Chris: Okay. So there are two organizations who are doing some work in 677 00:50:54,040 --> 00:50:58,940 this field. In fact, there's a whole kind of community around greener web 678 00:50:58,940 --> 00:51:04,670 performance where they are tracking this kind of stuff now. There's a group called 679 00:51:04,670 --> 00:51:07,190 the Shift Project, who I've referenced before, who talk about the carbon 680 00:51:07,190 --> 00:51:10,920 footprint... the video being the carbon footprint of Spain. They've actually got 681 00:51:10,920 --> 00:51:13,790 some browser extensions which you can install into Firefox. I'll give you 682 00:51:13,790 --> 00:51:17,530 numbers as you browse to see this. I've also put together just like some 683 00:51:17,530 --> 00:51:21,520 interactive notebooks, you can get some ballpark figures of this kind of stuff 684 00:51:21,520 --> 00:51:24,859 yourself. So very quickly, you can decide, well, do I do this or do I do something 685 00:51:24,859 --> 00:51:29,970 different. So, yes, look at Green Web Foundation, there's a link specifically to 686 00:51:29,970 --> 00:51:36,300 a notebook with the numbers for this. Herald: Next question goes to the 687 00:51:36,300 --> 00:51:38,930 Internet. Signal Angel: Hey, IRC states that in 688 00:51:38,930 --> 00:51:45,079 their experience, Kubernetes has a quite a high CPU idle usage, about 40 percent as 689 00:51:45,079 --> 00:51:51,250 mentioned. This mechanism that you showed to adapt the server usage to the demand. 690 00:51:51,250 --> 00:51:55,099 Does this mitigate against this? Chris: I don't really know enough about 691 00:51:55,099 --> 00:52:01,870 Kubernetes to give a useful opinion on Kubernetes. So my thing was like this is 692 00:52:01,870 --> 00:52:08,250 an interesting idea because it's treating cloud and compute like a utility. And as a 693 00:52:08,250 --> 00:52:13,050 result, we see patterns that we've seen that have success in other sectors. But 694 00:52:13,050 --> 00:52:15,460 that could be applied to us. I don't know beyond that, but I can tell you that 695 00:52:15,460 --> 00:52:20,310 there's a lot of well, there's basically funding going into this kind of stuff now. 696 00:52:20,310 --> 00:52:23,940 But I'm sorry, I don't know much more than that. But if you do work with Kubernetes, 697 00:52:23,940 --> 00:52:27,190 please you talk to me because I would be really nice to have a better answer than I 698 00:52:27,190 --> 00:52:32,109 don't know in future. Herald: Microphone number three. 699 00:52:32,109 --> 00:52:37,119 Mic3: How many talks do I have to attend here? So that it will have been worth it 700 00:52:37,119 --> 00:52:40,760 traveling here from Munich instead of watching this online. 701 00:52:40,760 --> 00:52:46,630 Chris: So it depends what... Okay. First of all, I think coming to a conference, 702 00:52:46,630 --> 00:52:51,030 just because there's talks, that's not the reason to come to a conference. You come 703 00:52:51,030 --> 00:52:54,100 to a conference to have high quality, high context conversations with other people 704 00:52:54,100 --> 00:52:57,930 and get something useful from that, because like you said, you don't need to 705 00:52:57,930 --> 00:53:01,040 do that. That said, the idea of like having kind of physical community is 706 00:53:01,040 --> 00:53:05,579 actually very, very useful. I think that there isn't a number, I can't say like 707 00:53:05,579 --> 00:53:10,770 seven because that's going to be meaningless. But there is a whole issue 708 00:53:10,770 --> 00:53:16,440 around basically the carbon footprint of traveling to events and in many cases, so 709 00:53:16,440 --> 00:53:21,530 for some context: I was organizing a conference in London called Helping 710 00:53:21,530 --> 00:53:24,590 Organize your Conference called Map Camp, and we were trying to internalize the 711 00:53:24,590 --> 00:53:29,109 carbon costs of people traveling, and we found that some basically a minority of 712 00:53:29,109 --> 00:53:33,640 people coming across the Atlantic Ocean wiped out, I think, by half the carbon 713 00:53:33,640 --> 00:53:38,030 footprint, the kind of carbon budget for a 600 person conference. So there is some 714 00:53:38,030 --> 00:53:41,780 numbers around that. We've actually hired a group to give to actually publish some 715 00:53:41,780 --> 00:53:47,300 of this information out there. And there's a couple of widgets to figure this stuff 716 00:53:47,300 --> 00:53:51,829 out. But if you're here for the talks, that's one thing. But really, you should 717 00:53:51,829 --> 00:53:56,900 be here to make speak to the other people and get some kind of meaningful connection 718 00:53:56,900 --> 00:54:01,430 you can have from there. Herald: Microphone number one. 719 00:54:01,430 --> 00:54:08,890 Mic1: Is this possible to create like an automated way, a platform or service that 720 00:54:08,890 --> 00:54:14,400 tech companies can connect to and estimate, like have a rough estimate about 721 00:54:14,400 --> 00:54:19,329 the carbon footprint based on the stack they use, based on the bandwidth, based on 722 00:54:19,329 --> 00:54:22,740 the, you know, different process information. 723 00:54:22,740 --> 00:54:28,580 Chris: It depends. This relies on the organization having access to the matrix 724 00:54:28,580 --> 00:54:33,300 that will go in as an input. So garbage in, garbage out. Right. So the spreadsheet 725 00:54:33,300 --> 00:54:37,390 I pointed to gives you a very, very low quality version of doing that. There's 726 00:54:37,390 --> 00:54:42,570 also a tool called AWS Green Cost Explorer. We've basically forked a diverse 727 00:54:42,570 --> 00:54:47,270 cost. AWS Cost Explorer worked out which ones, which regions are running on fossil 728 00:54:47,270 --> 00:54:50,380 fuels and then we present that information back to you so you can get some idea for 729 00:54:50,380 --> 00:54:55,550 this so you can work out these numbers. But I don't see them right now, largely 730 00:54:55,550 --> 00:55:00,300 because a lot of organizations see this information is commercially sensitive. So 731 00:55:00,300 --> 00:55:04,140 they don't like to share this. So we have to go on basically kind of some rough 732 00:55:04,140 --> 00:55:07,580 numbers here. And this is one of the problems that we do have. And that came up 733 00:55:07,580 --> 00:55:12,000 with the grim public procurement thing was that we don't have the transparency right 734 00:55:12,000 --> 00:55:17,079 now to make the particular informed decisions about this. But theoretically, 735 00:55:17,079 --> 00:55:20,700 yes. Herald: Microphone number five. 736 00:55:20,700 --> 00:55:28,080 Mic5: Hi. I have a question about this double things that you are doing. On one 737 00:55:28,080 --> 00:55:31,480 side, you have the getting things done like building sustainable infrastructure. 738 00:55:31,480 --> 00:55:35,900 And in the last days, yesterday, there was a couple of examples of that. And on the 739 00:55:35,900 --> 00:55:40,280 other side is generate momentum like convincing people to join the movement and 740 00:55:40,280 --> 00:55:46,099 be more aware of that. So I was wondering, how does, for example, the Green Web 741 00:55:46,099 --> 00:55:52,501 Foundation apply to that? In the sense then how radical can you be like, can you 742 00:55:52,501 --> 00:55:59,010 kick out people from your directory because you think they are not doing green 743 00:55:59,010 --> 00:56:03,369 enough? Or how does this work? Chris: So I should be clear about the 744 00:56:03,369 --> 00:56:07,400 Green Web Foundation just being a handful of guys. It's not a big thing at all. 745 00:56:07,400 --> 00:56:12,040 Right. So it's been running for about 10 years. And this is a thing that we have 746 00:56:12,040 --> 00:56:15,790 been doing for the last six months. I mean, I joined in March and we started 747 00:56:15,790 --> 00:56:20,310 looking through this and we are basically now, we've been contacting our providers 748 00:56:20,310 --> 00:56:25,390 and say: look, we need you to provide some more useful and some more rigorous data 749 00:56:25,390 --> 00:56:31,050 evidence to back up your green claims. For this reason, because you can't... 750 00:56:31,050 --> 00:56:34,611 basically, it's as the stakes are got higher, it's become more and more 751 00:56:34,611 --> 00:56:38,160 important to actually do this. And if you're going to base decisions about how 752 00:56:38,160 --> 00:56:43,270 you kind of choose infrastructure from now on, it makes a lot of sense to do that. So 753 00:56:43,270 --> 00:56:46,900 we are heading in that direction to say, look, if you can't share this information, 754 00:56:46,900 --> 00:56:52,750 we're going to stop listing you. But we have given, because we're not so sure 755 00:56:52,750 --> 00:56:58,650 ourselves in this, we we're giving people a deadline to get this information. So you 756 00:56:58,650 --> 00:57:02,660 probably see some the stats change over the coming weeks as the way that we do our 757 00:57:02,660 --> 00:57:07,300 reporting changes. But because we released open data sets around this on a regular 758 00:57:07,300 --> 00:57:12,760 basis, you can actually see this. Herald: Microphone number two. 759 00:57:12,760 --> 00:57:18,540 Mic2: Hey, have you heard about the Science Based Targets initiative? And if 760 00:57:18,540 --> 00:57:20,540 yes, what do you think of them? Chris: So Science Based Targets is 761 00:57:20,540 --> 00:57:26,000 interesting because they are one of the drivers to basic... So if you're not 762 00:57:26,000 --> 00:57:30,290 familiar what Science Based Targets are: Science Based Targets are basically a way 763 00:57:30,290 --> 00:57:34,390 to say, well, if you're an organization and you want to hit net zero, the science 764 00:57:34,390 --> 00:57:39,329 dictates that you need to take these steps here. I actually think they're better than 765 00:57:39,329 --> 00:57:42,359 nothing in a lot of cases and I think they're probably one of the more effective 766 00:57:42,359 --> 00:57:47,230 things to use. And they also insist that you do need to understand emissions in 767 00:57:47,230 --> 00:57:50,950 your supply chain. So I imagine organizations that sign up to Science 768 00:57:50,950 --> 00:57:55,020 Based Targets will come on pump against the problems that I've just explained 769 00:57:55,020 --> 00:58:00,020 about, trying to get numbers from the large companies who tend to be coy about 770 00:58:00,020 --> 00:58:06,450 sharing this stuff. I think it makes total sense at corporate level. If you're not a 771 00:58:06,450 --> 00:58:12,359 state body. But I feel that the legally binding targets that are now in place in 772 00:58:12,359 --> 00:58:16,900 the U.K. and we are likely to see in Europe in the next six months to a year, 773 00:58:16,900 --> 00:58:21,010 would be greater levers, because they provide a degree of certainty for people 774 00:58:21,010 --> 00:58:25,560 to then justify decisions. Because it's the law now, rather than being a thing 775 00:58:25,560 --> 00:58:30,730 that you might get unemployed for. Herald: Question from the Internet. 776 00:58:30,730 --> 00:58:36,090 Signal Angel: You mentioned that video on the Internet is a large majority of the 777 00:58:36,090 --> 00:58:41,550 energy usage. Can you say something about how this breaks down to encoding, storage, 778 00:58:41,550 --> 00:58:46,339 transmission and decoding? Chris: Yes. Those numbers, I understand, 779 00:58:46,339 --> 00:58:50,750 are all about just the transfer. So I don't think there is much about the 780 00:58:50,750 --> 00:58:53,290 encoding parts on that. That's just sending. 781 00:58:53,290 --> 00:58:57,710 Signal Angel: And quick follow up: can you approximately say how much people can save 782 00:58:57,710 --> 00:59:02,970 by, for example, staying on single definition or SD instead of HD? 783 00:59:02,970 --> 00:59:08,910 Chris: I... was it four times? I don't know what that the change in resolution 784 00:59:08,910 --> 00:59:13,910 would be and it's not something I feel comfortable showing numbers on, because I 785 00:59:13,910 --> 00:59:19,040 basically be making up on the spot. I feel that the solution is telling people to not 786 00:59:19,040 --> 00:59:24,400 do something like this - I think it's really, really hard ask and seriously, 787 00:59:24,400 --> 00:59:29,240 speeding? Getting off fossil fuels is a much better way to solve this problem than 788 00:59:29,240 --> 00:59:33,160 telling people they're not allowed to watch Netflix ever again or only in low 789 00:59:33,160 --> 00:59:38,369 resolution, for example. Like we like technology because we're like 15000 people 790 00:59:38,369 --> 00:59:41,630 here because we like technology. Telling everyone you don't get to use technology 791 00:59:41,630 --> 00:59:46,170 anymore is gonna be much, much harder to sell than just use green power and stop 792 00:59:46,170 --> 00:59:49,980 running fossil fuels. Herald: Okay. Last question goes to 793 00:59:49,980 --> 00:59:53,369 microphone number one. Mic1: Hello. I work for a company that... 794 00:59:53,369 --> 00:59:56,790 Herald: I've said something about affiliations and introductions. Stage your 795 00:59:56,790 --> 01:00:02,200 question? We're pretty much out of time. Mic1: If a company owns a lot of servers 796 01:00:02,200 --> 01:00:10,470 and the only solution to reduce the carbon footprint was to switch to green energy, 797 01:00:10,470 --> 01:00:16,760 this would increase the costs for the energy. And I'm afraid that I don't have 798 01:00:16,760 --> 01:00:25,560 good arguments to go to ask them to switch to green energy because of the costs. 799 01:00:25,560 --> 01:00:30,630 Chris: Green energy is cheaper than fossil fuel energy now, like ... so, we've seen 800 01:00:30,630 --> 01:00:34,400 this massive reduction in costs like a like storage has come down by 85 percent 801 01:00:34,400 --> 01:00:39,110 in the last say 10 years, we've seen a massive drop in renewables, like this 802 01:00:39,110 --> 01:00:43,710 argument is kind of being solved at that level there. It's a choice of provider or 803 01:00:43,710 --> 01:00:47,550 something separate. But I think in many cases it's going to be a case of choosing 804 01:00:47,550 --> 01:00:51,331 who you want to do that. And if you're trying to make this argument here, you can 805 01:00:51,331 --> 01:00:55,600 make the argument that generally people tend to want to work in companies that are 806 01:00:55,600 --> 01:00:59,810 not destroying the planet. And if you want to retain people or attract new people 807 01:00:59,810 --> 01:01:03,960 saying, hi, we're part of the solution, not the problem is a good way to present 808 01:01:03,960 --> 01:01:08,180 this. And that's why lots of organizations talk about kind of green credentials 809 01:01:08,180 --> 01:01:11,900 because it's a recruiting tool in the same way that they talk about open source or 810 01:01:11,900 --> 01:01:15,160 working from home or anything like that, especially as we get older and have more 811 01:01:15,160 --> 01:01:20,170 kids and then realize that: wow, they'll be alive when this stuff happens! Okay. 812 01:01:20,170 --> 01:01:23,230 Herald: Thank you so much. We're out of time. 813 01:01:23,230 --> 01:01:24,230 *applause* 814 01:01:24,230 --> 01:01:25,230 *36C3 postroll music* 815 01:01:25,230 --> 01:01:54,000 Subtitles created by c3subtitles.de in the year 2021. Join, and help us!