Green IO Newsletter - Fall 2026
Building a greener digital world, one byte at a time
Hello responsible technologist!
It has been a complicated year. Budgets are tighter, nobody knows what next year looks like, there is war in the news, lethal heatwaves keep hitting, and AI has taken the room, the agenda and the budget line that used to be (partly) ours. Many of you told me that leadership no longer backs this work the way it once did. Some of you came to our events on your own time. Some couldn't come at all.
So I had to prioritise, and you can see it here: this newsletter now arrives less often, and this issue holds two months in one. It isn't for lack of care. Jill's radar below is as stellar as ever. I simply had to choose where my hours go.
What I chose: the conferences must live. Being a responsible technologist is lonely inside most companies, and a room full of people who share it changes that. London reminded me of it. I watched a full room hang on every word of Susan Gourvenec, an academic with a rare gift for explaining science simply. She handed us ready-to-use, evidence-based arguments, such as how few birds wind turbines actually kill compared with, say, cats. (Mine pleads guilty.) When science meets activism in a room, it simply works. Everyone leaves with arguments to carry back to the colleague who isn’t in the room.
And since it has been a heavy year, one thing to keep in mind: the laws of physics are (unfortunately) on our side, and they are stronger than the laws of marketing. Moore's "law" was always more roadmap than law, wasn't it, Mr Moore?
Paris is the biggest chapter of the year. On 2–3 December we run two days and three tracks: workshops, a European track in English and, for the first time, a French track. Speakers from across Europe (20+ countries) will ask whether bringing tech back home means building more, or building less and better. If you read this newsletter and you are based in Europe, you are the person we are building it for, whether or not you call yourself part of the "Green IO community". Early-bird prices end this Sunday, 25 October, and I have a small gift for you: 10 free tickets with the code GREENIOVIP.
Thank you for staying, for replying, for showing up.
Gaël
____________
What’s been happening lately in the Green IO community?
🎤 Green IO conferences in 2026
Paris, Dec. 2nd - Dec 3rd
Big news! Green IO Paris doubles its size in 2026 with 3 tracks: a workshop, an English-speaking and a brand new French-speaking one. Two languages. One mission. Join us for a truly European line-up, plus a deep dive into the French ecosystem. Get one of the 10 free tickets using the voucher GREENIOVIP on the ticketing page.
_____________
Do you want to volunteer at Green IO?
Join Green IO Slack______
# Couldn’t attend? # Listen # Read # Tools # Study # Participate # Attend
What else has popped up on our Tech & Sustainability radar?
Listen… We’re all ears
#349 Tech Won't Save Us - Brazilian Data Boom. We are well versed in ‘enabled emissions’ but this podcast takes a look at how the renewable energy sector is being channeled for data center construction, and the impact this is having on communities. Plus their excellent 4-part series focusing on data vampires ( E1 ; E2 ; E3 ; E4 ).
The Great Simplification E233 with Dr. Roman Yampolskiy piles in on big tech and the risks of AI, and that “controllable superintelligence” is a misguided goal…”, whilst #E236 gets to grips with climate science numbers
#E84 of the Inevitable podcast investigates the explosive growth of AI infrastructure and the increasingly extreme measures companies are taking to get power online.
2026-09 Green Data Center gives a useful global round up.
EV E153 takes a dive into Software Water Intensity & TWiGS E155 talks about economics of green and efficient agentic AI.
Catalyst podcast episode unpacking the question of Do Datacenters Really Increase Electricity Prices?
# Watch… Sometimes video is worth its environmental footprint
A 4-part webinar series exploring the health impacts of datacenters.
# Read… Our coffee-break reading this month
As the EU Directive 2024/825 “Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition” comes into force, the Green Web Foundation give valuable advice on how to use the Green Web Badge. The revised ESRS was also recently published (21/09), and is set to enter into force on November 10, 2026, applying to financial years beginning from 1st January 2027.
Designer Ethiques has updated its guide for designers to get started on Eco-design (FR / EN), and in this article, Software Architecture is considered the first line of climate defense.
AI: the hot potato that just keeps on getting hotter, as the EU welcome AI slowdown and proposes the EU KIDS Act, Open AI admits more models going rogue (sorry, misalignment), claims of existential risks of AI keep on coming, and Anthropic release a report on Detecting and countering misuse of AI (September 2026).
Meanwhile the datacenter build-out furor continues, and this month a quick spotlight on Scotland, as the backlash grows, and planning permissions are suspended. And a legal filing has been made against the European Commission, claiming officials are withholding key environmental impact figures for AI data centers across Europe. On a positive note, the EU common rating scheme for datacenters has been launched (see section # Participate for how to submit your views). Plus, Amazon has launched ‘Built Together, an investment fund supporting local communities on education, job training, energy affordability, and water preservation, and in parallel publishes a defiant article to counteract the backlash of datacenter build-out. And the WEF published a white paper : Data Centre Sustainability & Resilience: A Decision Playbook for AI Infrastructure (Sep 2026).
A recent report from the consortium AI Greenwashing focuses on Nvidia and hidden emissions. Publicis Sapient partners up with Schneider Electric to help assess and reduce the environmental footprint of Schneider Electric's digital services, using e-footprint, an open-source modelling solution. The Greening Digital Companies 2026 report uncovers how its not all as green as we think regarding emissions reductions in the Telecoms sector, and Fershad Irani asks the question ‘What’s next for assessing website environmental impact?’.
# Tools… Skill-up for a sustainable future
The Sustainability Score: a tool for scoring repo’s carbon footprint (and grounded in the Green Software Foundation SCI specification).
DIST: Digital Impacts Schema & Taxonomy, as seen at Green IO London 2026 last month.
CodeWeave for finding those energy & CO2 hotspots.
The French rail company SNCF shares an open source calculator which measures its environmental impact on AI projects (EN / FR).
The UN DESA launches SDG Chat, an AI‑powered platform providing reliable SDG data to users globally.
Carbon Impacts Tracer for all fossil fuel extraction projects (app is based on the peer-reviewed methodology published in npj Climate Action (2025) by Abram et al.)
CLEER Dashboard from the Sustainable AI Group.
# Study… We’re never too old to learn
Green Software Engineering for sustainable IT services shows how Spain is leading the field.
Coding for sustainability investigates how good practice emerges in software development.
Green Software Landscape - worth exploring some of the 79 papers used in this mapping exercise.
Developer engagement in open-source software’s green transition shows that developer discourse is key.
An Eco-Efficient Software Process Model for Sustainable Computing Environments.
Sustainable and Green Software Architecture analyzes the multi-dimensional approach to sustainability.
Harvard Artificial Intelligence Index Report 2026 gives a comprehensive analysis of AI’s trajectory.
Extra terra nullius: Off-worlding the externalities of AI, Bitcoin mining and cloud computing with Orbital Data Centres.
Green by design: Constraint-based adaptive deployment in the cloud continuum introduces a methodology and architecture for the generation of a set of green-aware constraints that inform the scheduler to produce environmentally friendly deployment plans.
Climate anxiety : defining and responding to an emerging health challenge.
Software Developers on Climate Change, AI, and Sustainable Software: A survey of GitHub users, Summer 2026.
# Participate… One byte at a time
Have your say on the EU common rating scheme for datacenters.
Have your say too on the EU VAT & the Circular Economy consultation, particularly on the treatment of second-hand goods, and the destruction of viable goods.
ICT4S June 2027 has put out a call for papers.
The GSF Practitioner Course - available in 9 languages!
The GSF Green Software & AI Academy has just been launched.
Google calls for proposals on Climate Tech.
Sustainable IT Action NL - ‘Old Phones, New Cloud’ hackathon, 18 November 2026, s-Hertogenbosch [Den Bosch] (NDL).
Data for Good launches a fundraising campaign.
# Attend… Meet fellow responsible technologists
Cloud Native Sustainability Month Barcelona, 3 November 2026 Barcelona (ESP)
SOSV DeepTech Summit, 4-6 November, on-line (and free).
Green Tech Forum Paris, 5-6 November 2026, Paris (FRA).
Cooling without Compromise, 5 November 2026, online.
Green Tech South West, Data Center Dilemmas, 11 November 2026, Bristol (UK).
_______
Was this email forwarded to you?
Subscribe now______
One last positive thought!
Tipping points playbook: The Earthshot Prize and University of Exeter reveal how to make planetary repair unstoppable. What’s not to like.
See you in December!
Jill TELLIER, Gaël DUEZ & the Green IO Team
Hello responsible technologist!
It has been a complicated year. Budgets are tighter, nobody knows what next year looks like, there is war in the news, lethal heatwaves keep hitting, and AI has taken the room, the agenda and the budget line that used to be (partly) ours. Many of you told me that leadership no longer backs this work the way it once did. Some of you came to our events on your own time. Some couldn't come at all.
So I had to prioritise, and you can see it here: this newsletter now arrives less often, and this issue holds two months in one. It isn't for lack of care. Jill's radar below is as stellar as ever. I simply had to choose where my hours go.
What I chose: the conferences must live. Being a responsible technologist is lonely inside most companies, and a room full of people who share it changes that. London reminded me of it. I watched a full room hang on every word of Susan Gourvenec, an academic with a rare gift for explaining science simply. She handed us ready-to-use, evidence-based arguments, such as how few birds wind turbines actually kill compared with, say, cats. (Mine pleads guilty.)
And since it has been a heavy year, one thing to keep in mind: the laws of physics are on our side, and they are stronger than the laws of marketing. Moore's "law" was always more roadmap than law, wasn't it, Mr Moore?
Paris is the biggest chapter of the year. On 2–3 December we run two days and three tracks: workshops, a European track in English and, for the first time, a French track. Speakers from across Europe (20+ countries) will ask whether bringing tech back home means building more, or building less and better. If you read this newsletter and you are based in Europe, you are the person we are building it for, whether or not you call yourself part of the "Green IO community". Early-bird prices end this Sunday, 25 October, and I have a small gift for you: 10 free tickets with the code GREENIOVIP.
Thank you for staying, for replying, for showing up.
Gaël
You just read issue #77 of Green IO. You can also browse the full archives of this newsletter.
