29 d’abr. 2024
23 d’abr. 2024
8 d’abr. 2024
Tools for Measuring Software’s Carbon Footprint
Other tools developers can use to measure the impact of green software engineering practices include dashboards that give an overview of the estimated carbon emissions associated with cloud workloads, such as the AWS Customer Carbon Footprint Tool and Microsoft’s Azure Emissions Impact Dashboard; energy profilers or power monitors like Intel’s Performance Counter Monitor; and tools that help calculate the carbon footprint of websites, such as Ecograder, Firefox Profiler, and Website Carbon Calculator.
Software Carbon Intensity (SCI) Specification
A specification that describes how to calculate a carbon intensity score for software applications.
Created and managed by the Standards Working Group in the greensoftware.foundation.
This document, the Software Carbon Intensity technical specification, describes how to calculate the carbon intensity of a software application. It describes the methodology of calculating the total carbon emissions and the selection criteria to turn the total into a rate that can be used to achieve real-world, physical emissions reductions, also known as abatement.
Electricity has a carbon intensity depending on where and when it is consumed. An intensity is a rate. It has a numerator and a denominator. A rate provides you with helpful information when considering how to design, develop, and deploy software applications. This specification describes the carbon intensity of a software application or service.
https://github.com/Green-Software-Foundation/sci
Choosing a greener algorithm could also save carbon.
Tools like CodeCarbon and ML CO2 Impact can help make the choice by estimating the energy usage and carbon footprint of training different AI models.
1 d’abr. 2024
Digitalization and Sustainability: A Call for a Digital Green Deal
A Digital Green Deal would aim to ensure coherence between sustainability policy and digital policy initiatives.
This requires addressing and integrating three aims:
- First, policies should reduce the environmental footprint stemming from lifecycle effects of digital technologies. For instance, design directives can establish environmental standards for hardware production, require manufactures to increase the share of recycled materials and reused parts, and require devices to be designed modular and repairable. Moreover, hardware companies can be incentivized to change their business models from selling to letting (device-as-a-service). To reduce impacts during the use phase, policies should set clear and ambitious energy standards for devices and data centers, ensuring constant improvement of those standards over time.
- Second, sustainability policies should foster the development and application of digital solutions that aim to spur genuine transformations in systems of provision and distribution while simultaneously minimizing usage of digital innovations that are counterproductive from an environmental perspective. Digital opportunities and risks should be addressed in a cross-cutting manner, for instance in legislation on circular economy, governance of value-chains and corporate accountability requirements. Opportunities and risks should also be addressed in sectoral policies, thereby advancing sustainability transformations in energy, mobility, agriculture, building/housing, industry, and consumption of goods and services whilst not setting back social issues. For example, transport policy-making should not leave the governance of vehicle automation to ethics commissions or data governance initiatives alone but proactively develop initiatives to support communal or private mobility providers (e.g., transport associations) in the bundling of vehicle automation and car sharing in a wider Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) environment. In general, governance should ensure that a digitalised solution provides an added value compared to a non-digital one. Also, risks of digital failure caused either by unpredictable environmental events or malevolent actors (e.g., cyber-security attacks) must be assessed and countermeasures configurated.
- Third, digital policies should include elements that serve sustainability goals. For example, most platform markets lack ‘production standards’ – there are neither energy standards for video streaming or social media platforms, nor are services on rental or sharing platforms bound to contribute to low-energy housing or reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in transportation. Since even comparatively strong platform legislation such as the Digital Services Package of the European Union do not fill this void, future legislation is needed that includes environmental and social standards for service provision in platform markets. Likewise, policies regarding data governance, artificial intelligence, e-commerce, digital finance, crypto-currencies among others should include legislation that advances sustainability goals.
Amid explosive demand, America is running out of power
Vast swaths of the United States are at risk of running short of power as electricity-hungry data centers and clean-technology factories proliferate around the country, leaving utilities and regulators grasping for credible plans to expand the nation’s creaking power grid.
In Georgia, demand for industrial power is surging to record highs, with the projection of new electricity use for the next decade now 17 times what it was only recently. Arizona Public Service, the largest utility in that state, is also struggling to keep up, projecting it will be out of transmission capacity before the end of the decade absent major upgrades.
Northern Virginia needs the equivalent of several large nuclear power plants to serve all the new data centers planned and under construction. Texas, where electricity shortages are already routine on hot summer days, faces the same dilemma.
The nation’s 2,700 data centers sapped more than 4 percent of the country’s total electricity in 2022, according to the International Energy Agency. Its projections show that by 2026, they will consume 6 percent. Industry forecasts show the centers eating up a larger share of U.S. electricity in the years that follow, as demand from residential and smaller commercial facilities stays relatively flat thanks to steadily increasing efficiencies in appliances and heating and cooling systems.
Environmental efficiency and impacts on United Nations Sustainable Development Goals of data centres and cloud computing
Supplement 55 to ITU-T L-series Recommendations explores the environmental sustainability of data centres during their entire life cycle, factoring in a broad spectrum of energy and environmental aspects that needs to be addressed to achieve the relevant United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, to support the development of sustainable data centres and cloud-computing services. An integrated approach addressing both technical and implementation challenges is applied to yield actionable insights to policy makers and industry experts. As the role of data centres and cloud computing increases, so are the concerns over their energy use and its cost, as well as the associated impacts on climate change and environment. In recent years, the data centre and cloud industry has made great progress in enhancing energy efficiency and adopting renewable energy sources. However, a sole focus on energy efficiency may cause burden shifting and overlook other relevant environmental impacts stemming from other parts of the data centre life cycle and cloud-computing value chain.
https://www.itu.int/ITU-T/recommendations/rec.aspx?rec=15216
Guidelines on the implementation of environmental efficiency criteria for artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies
Supplement 53 to ITU-T L-series Recommendations provides guidelines to policy-makers, technologists, innovators, environmentalists and other stakeholders from the technology industry, environmental sciences and policy arena on the topic of environmental efficiency criteria to assess the environmental impacts of artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies. These guidelines aim to serve as common factors for the above-mentioned stakeholders to consider while developing, deploying and promoting any piece of technology into the market and society, rather providing than a comprehensive list of criteria. While "emerging technologies" is a broad term, this Supplement identifies a few sample technologies through their accordant applications and areas of work in 16 applicable industry domains, which stakeholders can use as references to improve the environmental efficiency of their own technological products and/or services. When discussing environmental efficiency, this Supplement approaches environmental efficiency criteria from an adjusted model of life-cycle assessment of a product, within which three stages of environmental impacts – materials, use and end of life – are examined. The Supplement provides both long-term and short-term strategies, which include not only specific examples for certain technologies addressing the three stages of environmental efficiency, but also an instrument to be used to localize such guidelines as well as to allow global benchmarking.
https://www.itu.int/ITU-T/recommendations/rec.aspx?rec=15169
Computer processing, data management and energy perspective
Supplement 52 to ITU-T L-series Recommendations proposes a set of good practices to improve the energy efficiency of cyber-physical applications – making use of Internet of things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), and digital twins. First, the Supplement introduces the cyber-physical paradigm, engineering reference framework, and a couple of system deployments models. Secondly, it defines three end-to-end use case typologies to be addressed (i.e., monitoring applications using smart IoT systems and AI software; smart applications using Edge computing and cloud data centre; and simulation applications using digital twin pattern). Energy efficiency practices are discussed adopting a circular value-chain model that consists of three main steps: data storage; data transfer/move; and data processing/analytics. Finally, this Supplement offers a set of recommended practices relating to each component of the three end-to-end use case typologies.
https://www.itu.int/ITU-T/recommendations/rec.aspx?rec=15168
Recommendation ITU-T L.1400: Overview and general principles of methodologies for assessing the environmental impact of information and communication technologies
Recommendation ITU-T L.1400 presents the general principles on assessing the environmental impact of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and outlines the different methodologies that have been developed in the L.1400-series: • Assessment of the environmental impact of ICT goods, networks and services • Assessment of the environmental impact of ICT projects • Assessment of the environmental impact of ICT in organizations • Assessment of the environmental impact of ICT in cities • Assessment of the environmental impact of the ICT sector • Assessment on how the use of ICT solutions impacts greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of other sectors • Decarbonization trajectories for the ICT sector • Net zero guidance for ICT organizations • Guidance on how to address the ITU's Connect 20xx targets The Recommendation describes the intended usage of each Recommendation and the connections between them. Finally, it lists ongoing work items.
https://www.itu.int/ITU-T/recommendations/rec.aspx?rec=15182
ITU-T L.1420 - Scope 3 guidance for telecommunication operators
https://www.itu.int/ITU-T/recommendations/rec.aspx?rec=15671
Summary
Scope 3 emissions from telecommunication operators are the indirect emissions of their value chain, including their supply chain and products used by customers. Estimating Scope 3 emissions is difficult since this refers to emission sources outside a company's direct control.
Scope 3 emissions cover a wide range of economic activities that are divided into 15 Categories.
This Supplement establishes guidance to harmonize methods for telecommunication operators to assess and report their Scope 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and to increase the coverage and transparency of the reporting. This guidance prioritizes Categories 1 to 2 and 11 of the GHG Protocol (which addresses the life cycle impact of company portfolios) in particular and Category 3 (which is closely linked to Scope 1 and 2), although all categories are addressed.
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