Highlights
-
2024-11-28 14:35 But because a significant chunk of Microsoft’s emissions reported carbon emission the last year or two actually came from the construction of data centers and the actual pouring of concrete, this is, in my view this is actually quite an interesting one because it’s one potential lever for talking about the embodied carbon associated with using the kind of software that runs in these data centers. And there are some honestly quite impressive savings because the thing about wood compared to concrete is that wood can be a sink of CO2 rather than a source of CO2 emissions. Aseem, I’m pretty sure you’ve had a look at this and given that you used to work at Microsoft, you might have some kind of perspectives on this one.
-
2024-11-28 14:35 For example, you mentioned the OCP, so that’s the Open Compute Project. They’re actually 3D models of wooden data center designs. There’s one chap called Carl Rabe who’s been running the wooden data center company for years who’s been doing this kind of work and they find it quite interesting and endearing at the same time. There’s something kind of pleasing about this.
-
2024-11-28 14:36 So yeah, so that’s why this is such a. Why are we talking about cement? It’s 7% of global emissions, just cement. So finding alternatives is not just an edge case, it’s kind of one of the main things that we need to do.
-
2024-11-28 14:36 that’s about three to five times people’s estimates of the digital sector. So this is one of the big ones that we need to be aware of and it’s essentially one of the most used materials in the world basically as well we’ll share some links to that because it’s. When you start looking into it, it’s surprisingly interesting if you care about reducing the emissions associated with digital and you accept that a lot of these things take place in buildings basically.
-
2024-11-28 14:36 in Europe we have this law called the Energy Efficiency Directive. I’ll share a link to a post that we have published at the Green Web foundation called Happy EE Day. To those who celebrate. This is specifically about the fact that there’s data that’s been collected at a data center level, which is actually higher resolution than this kind of regional level that you might see here, which in my view basically sets out a way for all the other non the providers who aren’t just Microsoft, Google and Amazon to have a way of sharing the same kind of figures so that you actually start Making comparable, you can start making comparisons between running a workload in one data center with one provider versus another one, for example. So that’s some of the work that’s going into this right now.
-
2024-11-28 14:36 Basically because we are starting to get glimpses of this. For example, in the Netherlands we’re seeing some submissions come to the public into the light of day and I believe there’s some stuff in Germany coming as well. So we will see, get some advanced notice and this might be stuff that can kind of come into this. So we can start creating essentially an open resource of this information so that if you’re a operator of infrastructure, you’ve got an idea of what can actually measurably reduce some of the emissions on this, did you say? It’s definitely going to be a public data set.
-
2024-11-28 14:36 So I’ll share a link to. Again, a little bit of a kind of like wonkish thing basically with the Energy Efficiency Directive in Europe, which is, you know, all of Europe, basically, that’s 27 countries. There’s two things. If you operate your data center, you’re mandated to publish a bunch of data points, like how much energy have you used, how clean is the power, how much of the power came from certificates versus on site generation and stuff like that. It’s quite detailed.
-
2024-11-28 14:36 When you say. Sorry to interrupt, but when you say published you mean like in terms of like a CDP where you have to publish to an authority who will then keep it secret or make available publicly. Make publicly available. However, there is a kind of caveat which basically says if you’re going to do this, you need to do this. Except in the case where something is considered a trade secret.
-
2024-11-28 14:37 So what we’ve seen is that some providers are sharing this information and some providers are not sharing this information. So this is the thing that we’re seeing now. So now we know which data centers. MI6 users basically always saying which companies are being. Or when companies talk about being really transparent, we have a way of seeing which companies are walking the walk when it comes to talking about transparency and which ones are not being as transparent as their comms is saying.
-
2024-11-28 14:37 We’ve been using computers and data centers for decades, but we have no real meaningful numbers at this level of detail. And even half a megawatt, 500 kilowatts of power, that’s still quite a. That’s a few racks at least. Right? So that’s still a bunch of data centers which aren’t being kind of included.
-
2024-11-28 14:37 here was actually legislation around reporting on AI, just like Kasim mentioned. And there was unparalleled investment in cleaner forms of energy. And now we’ve got a new set of people who are in power who take more of a dim view on climate change and unabashedly in favor of fossil fuels.
-
2024-11-28 14:37 wind doesn’t look like it’s going to be great. So the idea that one of the knock on effects of this might be. That Elon doesn’t own a wind company. But one thing it might kind of bring up from a kind of operational point of view is like, do you end up with a slightly less volatile grid because you’ve got a bunch of huge amounts of money being thrown at stuff which is either fuel based, so it can be dispatched internal all the time, or nuclear, regardless of your feelings of that, which is a kind of steady thing that might have some implications of what you end up building as a result. Because I could start talking about all the other kind of all the justice themes around that, but we’re coming to time and I don’t want to start on that because this is a rabbit.