Green IO Newsletter - December 2025

Building a greener digital world, one byte at a time

Hello responsible technologist!

The last newsletter of the year is often an opportunity for some introspection. After 5 conferences and 20 podcast episodes, I realized over this year how I was obsessed with waste. Of course physical waste has always been at the top of my mind, but the advent of the attention economy has shifted my attention toward the time we spend doing things. I reckon that some listeners have spent more than a day listening to the podcast this year, and some attendees several days of their life (yes we do have technologists attending several Green IO conferences per year!). I now better understand why I am focusing so much on the ROTI (Return On Time Invested). The last edition of Green IO Paris was no exception. Of course, just gathering ~800 responsible technologists to meet and mingle is an achievement in its own right, and the same goes with offering almost 20 European NGOs a room to work together for an entire day. Many thanks to all speakers, MCs, volunteers, sponsors and participants for making it such as success. But, what about the talks ? Did people truly get new insights? Did perspectives change thanks to feedback? Were there benefits from having a majority of non-French speakers? This is why I was asking seasoned green IT experts all around the venue “how is the conference going for you so far?”, and I was relieved that the feedback went beyond the usual politeness and was illustrated by clear examples. 

Does all of this apply to me? Of course it does, so here are my top 6 nuggets of knowledge harvested in Green IO Paris 2025 (from the sessions I was able to attend): 

• We can still “agree to disagree”! Despite Meta’s algorithms and all the information bubbles, the debate between Sasha Luccioni (Hugging Face), Sophia Falk (University of Bonn) and Vincent Poncet (Google) illustrated the different perspectives on how to measure AI environmental footprint. 

• The good, the bad and the ugly servers. Paying attention to the ITEEsv (IT equipment Energy Efficiency for Servers) can lead to massive optimization with, for instance, previous generation servers with upgraded CPUs being more energy efficient than current generation servers. Less automatic 3-year replacement and more fine-tuning is needed! (Richard Kenny). 

• When AI hype is countered, finance and climate win, as highlighted with the success of Axa team in the Sustainable Digital Challenge, which managed to divide by 10 its carbon footprint by moving from 100% GenAI to 80% OCR and 20% GenAI.

• Geopolitics & Tech go hand in hand. Once this obvious truth is stated, it makes a lot of sense to analyze the power matrix between Structural power (Constitutive, Sectoral, Tech-layering, and Ecosystem) and nodal power (Intermediation, Gateway, Concentration, Territorial), as explained by Ophelie Coelho. 

• Sometimes shredding an Nvidia A100 SXM is a worthwhile investment. The eco-toxicity of manufacturing GPU chips is largely underestimated, as the amount of minerals and metals required (~18kg of antimony equivalent) were among the many findings of the research conducted by Sophia Falk. 

• Never in the history of Digital UX have deceptive design patterns been used to such an extent to impose a feature, namely GenAI. For instance, having up to 4 entry points on a single interface to access a feature is against all design best practices. And the widespread use of the purple color reinforces the magical narrative on its prowess, but also prepares the user to be deceived - it’s “magic” after all (Anaëlle Beignon)

Wishing you a peaceful winter break.

Gaël Duez

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What’s been happening lately in the Green IO community?

🎙️ Podcast episodes

#E71 Successes and hurdles in manufacturing a sustainable smartphone with Agnes Crepet Listen (release date: Dec. 23rd)

#E70 Sustainability: A Strategic Advantage (not just a cost) with Sathpal Singh & Jo Masraff Listen

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🔔 Never miss an episode!

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🎤 Green IO conferences in 2026

Singapore, April 14^th - April 15^th
A third edition focusing on concrete use cases in the intersection of FinOps and GreenOps. Get an early bird ticket here.

New-York, May 13^th - May 14^th
“AI as a controversial force for sustainability“ is the theme of this second edition. Early bird tickets available here.

Amsterdam, June 9^th - June 10^th
First conference in the Netherlands! Early bird tickets are available here.

Munich, July 8^th - July 9^th
"From measuring to achieving: industrializing IT Sustainability" will be discussed between many DACH experts. Early bird tickets are available here.

London, Sept. 30^th - Oct. 1^st
A bigger venue for the N°1 Green IT conference in the UK. Save the date! Early bird tickets will be available soon.

Paris, Dec. 1^st - Dec 3^rd
Expect another edition with a wide European line-up. Early bird tickets will be available soon.

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# Couldn’t attend? # Listen # Watch # Read # Tools # Study # Participate # Attend

What else has popped up on our Tech & Sustainability radar?

Listen… We’re all ears

Picking up from the discussions at day 3 Green IO Paris, revolving around AI, CXO Bytes E14 talks empathy & green AI, whilst EV E123 dives literally into the deep end to explore the hidden costs of powering AI, and the quantity of water needed to cool data centers. On a similar track, E304 of Tech Won’t Save Us puts forward the idea that data centers are a literally a climate enemy, and The Great Simplification E203 goes one step further, hypothesizing how artificial superintelligence may just wipe out the entire human species. And all of this is is set in the context of potentially softening European AI regulation, as discussed on Tech Won’t Save Us E305…

# Watch… Sometimes video is worth its environmental footprint

The Thinking Game: This documentary traces DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassabis and his efforts to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI), whilst evoking the huge responsibility that such technology requires, and offering examples of its positive impacts.

# Read… Our coffee-break reading this month

The title says it all:‘*The Game Needs to Change; Towards Sustainable Game Design. (*Eds. Prax, Whittle & York. CRC Press. Nov 2025), and this free excerpt focuses on the importance of systemic change to contribute to meaningful climate action in the games industry. And Gerry McGovern’s new book “99^th day : A warning about Technology” can be pre-ordered here (listen out too for our forthcoming February 2026 podcast with the data waste expert).

Following on from various studies about protecting young users, the negative effects of passive consumption or short form video use, or the general impact on social media on teen health, Australia’s younger teenagers now face life without access to certain social media accounts. At the same time, People vs Big Tech’s youth movement Ctrl+Alt+Reclaim is pushing for a new digital deal, citing that they “believe in a digital world built for empowerment- not brainwashing. For connection- not addiction.”

The debate over AI continues to rage on, as even Jared Kaplan voices his concerns over its rapid impact on society and humanity as a whole. Interestingly, The American Center for Democracy & Technology has just released a practical checklist targeting public officials to help them advance trustworthy & responsible use of AI in public benefits & services. This echoes recent thoughts on how businesses must also must improve their decision-making procedures in order to build trust, and ensure full transparency & business accountability in AI governance. And if the idea that big tech platforms ideologies are becoming increasingly authoritarian resonates with you, there is some great data visualization from this piece by The Authoritarian Stack.

And in case it wasn’t on your radar in between the end of year mayhem, the European Parliament and Council have reached a deal (to be approved by Council Ministers early 2026) on the Omnibus Package, disappointing many, including the Shift Project and Amnesty International, as there are significant compromises and major reductions in scope. Plus, the Paris Agreement 10 years on, and former UN Climate Chief Christiana Figueres’ thoughts on whether it has delivered positive change, and one of the many summaries on what went right, and what went wrong.

# Tools… Skill-up for a sustainable future

IT Climate Ed and Antarctica have just released the latest version of AI Wattch, an open source browser extension that measures the impact of LLM emissions in real time: ChatGpt and Anthropic support, energy, carbon emission and water consumption, prompting tips and more. Install it from the Chrome or Firefox marketplace.

And hot off the (Paris 2025 conference) press, Amadeus, collaborating with GSF, launch Carmen, an open source tool to measure entire applications’ portfolios, focusing on cloud infrastructure and Kubernetes workloads.

# Study… We’re never too old to learn

From FLOPs to Footprints - the resource cost of AI : This study, heralded in person in Paris by lead author Sophia Falk, quantifies the material footprint of AI training by linking computational workloads to physical hardware needs. Plus, driving sustainable development of the AI server industry.

And, also showcased at Paris in the talk given by Aurore Tual, a heads-up on the forthcoming release (Q1 2026) of the new standard ISO/IEC DTS 20125, establishing requirements and recommendations for reducing environmental impacts of digital services.

# Attend… Meet fellow responsible technologists

IGAE ‘Green Computing and Sustainable IT’, 20-21 Jan 2026, Amsterdam (NED)

FOSDEM 2026, 31 Jan- 1 Feb 2026, Brussels (BEL)

World Impact Summit, 5-6 Feb 2026, Paris (FRA)

IEEE GreenTech, 25-27 March 2026, Boulder, Colorado (USA)

ICSE & Greens‘26, 12-18 April 2026, Rio De Janeiro (BRA)

Hack Summit, 22-23 April 2026, Lausanne (SUI)

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One last positive thought!

Many people asked us about this picture which Gaël used to illustrate trust as well as the limits of what we can carry for a long time. It was taken during a performance of the circus company “Cirquons Flex”. Have a glimpse of their show here.