As the world becomes increasingly digitalised, data centres and data transmission networks are emerging as an important source of energy demand.

More than 272 million new laptops are manufactured every year, making the IT industry responsible for as much greenhouse gas pollution as the entire airline industry. This equates to the IT industry contributing 2% of global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.  Internet usage continues to rise, with more people using mobiles and tablets in their everyday … What Is The Carbon Footprint Of A Laptop? Read More »

Generative AI (Gen-AI) represents a major growth potential for the digital industry, a new stage in digital transformation through its many applications. Unfortunately, by accelerating the growth of digital technology, Gen-AI is contributing to the significant and multiple environmental damage caused by its sector. The question of the sustainability of IT must include this new technology and its applications, by measuring its environmental impact. To best respond to this challenge, we propose various ways of improving the measurement of Gen-AI's environmental impact. Whether using life-cycle analysis methods or direct measurement experiments, we illustrate our methods by studying Stable Diffusion a Gen-AI image generation available as a service. By calculating the full environmental costs of this Gen-AI service from end to end, we broaden our view of the impact of these technologies. We show that Gen-AI, as a service, generates an impact through the use of numerous user terminals and networks. We also show that decarbonizing the sources of electricity for these services will not be enough to solve the problem of their sustainability, due to their consumption of energy and rare metals. This consumption will inevitably raise the question of feasibility in a world of finite resources. We therefore propose our methodology as a means of measuring the impact of Gen-AI in advance. Such estimates will provide valuable data for discussing the sustainability or otherwise of Gen-AI solutions in a more transparent and comprehensive way. We intend to help this discussion by differentiating in our approach between the embodied and operational impacts of Gen-AI. In this way, we can consider the sustainability of models, as we already do for equipment.

DIMPACT

We're excited to announce a proposed standard for assessing technology-related carbon emissions – an approach to classifying an organisation's technology footprint in a way that enables consistent analysis and benchmarking of the carbon impact, aligned with the GHG protocol.

Towards environmentally sustainable computational science

Details of the publication

Learn about optimizing your Azure carbon emissions.

In this post, I want to look at the two different carbon accounting models used for estimation, and in what scenario you might use one over the other.

Als ervaren digitale experts helpen we organisaties met toegankelijke technologie. Strategie, UX, websites, technologie, online marketing...

Request PDF | On Sep 1, 2016, Marc Vautier and others published Is “software eco-design” a solution to reduce the environmental impact of electronic equipments? | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate

From a Earthshot Prize Nominee, World Green Technology Leader, Digital Ambassador of the Year and Google Brain Award Winner Decarbonise Digital | Sustainable IT | Climate Change Solutions

A calculator that allows users to translate abstract greenhouse gas amounts into concrete terms that are easy to understand.

A toolkit for exhaustively modeling the environmental impact of digital services. - Boavizta/e-footprint: A toolkit for exhaustively modeling the environmental impact of digital services.

Digitalize sustainably. We sustain your IT and value your CSR. Understand to act. Save time & money. Be compliant.

Discover amazing ML apps made by the community

L’empreinte carbone du groupe de presse a fortement baissé en 2022 par rapport à 2019 à périmètre égal. L’usage d’appareils électroniques pour lire « Le Monde » compte à lui seul pour près de 40 % de ce bilan des émissions de gaz à effet de serre.

Wrapper de l'extension GreenIT Analysis. Contribute to cnumr/GreenIT-Analysis-cli development by creating an account on GitHub.

In this post I will look at an possible alternative approach to calculating the emissions of the server (data center/hosting) segment in website carbon calculations using the methodology outlined by Cloud Carbon Footprint.

Big Tech is marketing its use of carbon-aware computing as way to cut emissions. without mentioning its limits or its dangers. A deep dive, and a way forward.