Green IO Newsletter - April 2025
Building a greener digital world, one byte at a time
Hello responsible technologist!
🇸🇬 Insights from Singapore
Waste and inefficiency... Maybe not the catchiest introduction I could have come up with, and definitely not a ChatGPT generated! 😅
Still I was impressed by how many speakers at Green IO Singapore 2025 covered this angle: from Vincent Caldeira alerting that the average GPU was used at less than 20% capacity (massive overprovisioning) to Khang Nguyen Trieu explaining how their cloud migration reduced servers by 60% (for once a well assessed and tracked made by Accor, not the hyperscaler) and Kapil Pendse disclosing that idle resources account for a majority of container costs at AWS (54% cluster idle) as well as Julie Schiller reminding the cost of the digital content never accessed again (90% of unused data). Not to mention the waste recycling rate in Singapore shared by Andrew Tay (52%). Still it was both enlightening to see both ends of the loop - manufacturers (HP and Razer) and waste managers (KGS) - trying to close the gap, and sometimes a bit frustrating to see that the business models are not yet aligned enough with a truly circular economy despite all these attempts. Of course many other angles were covered in webdev, metrics, or change management. As usual, all presentations are freely available on the Green IO Singapore 2025 homepage, go and make your own opinion.
By the way, did I tell you how this 2nd edition of Green IO Singapore went well? With 3 times more attendees, speakers sharing many real-life use cases and a cool afterwork party (yet another one!), all the boxes were ticked (except maybe for the catering…). But mostly this 2025 edition reflected the vibrancy of the Singaporean IT sustainability ecosystem and the impact of creating meaningful events based on true human connections. A huge thank you to all those who attended, participated or supported the conference in any way from sponsoring to volunteering.
I hope to see some of our readers next month for the launch of Green IO New York. With Dr. Sasha Luccioni as our keynote speaker, it promises to be an exciting event with an exceptional line-up, bringing both diversity and expertise.
Gaël DUEZ
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🎙️ Podcast episodes
#57 “Environmental footprint of AI & Data centers” with Pr. PS Lee and Pr. Heng Wang . Listen | 5-mins read
#56 “Building Green Software, the 1 year anniversary” with Sarah Hsu. Listen | 5-mins read
#55 “Decarbonizing Kubernetes” with Flavia Paganelli and Niki Manoledaki. Listen | 5-mins read
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🔔 Never miss an episode!
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🎤 Green IO conferences
New York, May 14th and 15th 2025
First Green IO conference in North America! Have a look at the final agenda here.
Munich, July 2nd and 3rd 2025
First Green IO conference in DACH region! Get early bird tickets and check first confirmed speakers here.
London, September 23rd and 24th 2025
Will London beat Paris this year in terms of attendees? We expect a massive turnout for this 3rd edition, so you should get early bird tickets here.
Paris, December 9th - 11th 2025
Expect this edition to gather the “crème de la crème” of Green IT thought leaders from all over Europe. Get an early bird ticket here.
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# Listen # Watch # Read # Tools # Participate # Attend
What else has popped up on our Tech & Sustainability radar?
# Listen… We’re all ears
Two great podcasts to listen to this month. First up is a double episode from Sismique with Tariq Krim. E147/1 & E147/2 examine the power dynamics at play in this digital era. Sovereignty, freedom, democracy; they are all on the table for discussion - it’s worth brushing up your school level french for these as they are in FR only. Next up is E270 from Tech Won’t Save Us on the Dirty Alliance between Tech & the Oil Industry, and which touches on the concept of ‘enabled emissions’ highlighted by Will & Holly Alpine in GreenIO E47a & 47b.
# Read… Our coffee-break reading this month
We know that there are a myriad of resources needed in the fabrication of a smart phone, but this this article from Katie Singer, with a walk-through of questions to ask ourselves, brings it right home. The IEA has published a new paper on Energy & AI, and what if some of China’s data centers are currently stand unused does that mean the great AI data center boom is on the wane? Plus, if you are looking to escape the clutches of Big Tech in daily operations perhaps the answer is ‘Docs’, as France & Germany launch an alternative to the famous G-suite.
# Tools… Skill-up for a sustainable future
How will the big hyperscalers and other IaaS and PaaS providers leverage the just released Real-Time Cloud Standard is a multi-million tons of CO2e question! We will investigate its content and potential repercussions in a forthcoming Green IO episode. Meanwhile, Hugging Face launches the first AI chat tool tracking real time energy use, showing how small energy savings across the board really do add up. If you are working on Scope 2, then Electricity Maps expanded database might just be what you need. Finally, Electricity Maps, Code Carbon and many more are listed with many other initiatives on the newly launched GitHub Climate Action Plan for Developers.
# Study… We’re never too old to learn
Insightful case study on calculating the environmental costs of a Gen AI service, resulting in a proposed methodology to measure the embodied and operational impacts up front, plus FUEL, the first FU-based framework for evaluating LLM serving’s environmental impact. Bridging the Gap, by Sacha Luccioni, states the case for integrating ethical dimensions as well as environmental ones in AI research and practice, and new research shows that ‘green’ prompting techniques can lead to big differences in LLM energy consumption.
# Attend… Meet fellow responsible technologists
Green AI Summit 25-26 April, Harvard & Boston Universities / Online (USA)
GREENS 2025, 29 April, Ottawa (CA)
BEREC eco-design workshop, 30 April 2025 (Online)
Hot Carbon, 12 May 2025, Cambridge, Massachusetts (USA)
GreenTech Forum, 17-18 June, Brussel (BE)
Climate Innovation Forum 2025, 25 June 2025, London (UK)
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One last positive thought
&!@#
Swearing might just be good for the planet!
Apparently, using foul language avoids the automatic use of Gemini on Google search engine ?! If your sensibilities allow, test it out and let us know!
See you next month!
Jill TELLIER & the Green IO Team