Green IO Newsletter - June 2025
Building a greener digital world, one byte at a time
Hello responsible technologist!
With Munich 2025, Green IO Season 3 comes to a close with a bang! With 20 new podcasts, and a series of 5 global conferences, there is much to celebrate and also much to digest. From sectoral insights and case studies, tools and models to track emissions, to best practice in greening software and latest developments in hardware and more, it is fantastic to be part of a flourishing digital sustainability community.
But if we have the knowledge and tools (allbeit not perfect) to make progress, why the slow take-up? Maybe we are not truly accepting our own responsibilities…?
In this fast-moving era of digital agency, ML agency and automation, human agency still counts. We are the creators of systems, products and technologies, so it is up to us, not a machine, to anticipate and consider the consequences.
This is where our savoir agir comes into play. Alongside the savoir être and savoir faire, the ‘art of how to (re)act’ means being capable of seizing opportunities to put into practice an appropriate knowledge set to resolve a given problem. It demands many skills (technical, social, emotional, etc), and, more importantly, courage.
So this is the real task ahead for us all: to dig deep, and find the courage to drive change by aptly putting into practice what we already know (or at least ask for help when we need it). This means good governance and leadership derived from transparent decision-making, explicit (not implicit or hidden) objectives, and a collective, cross disciplinary modus operandi which openly challenges biases and assumptions. And it is this very collective force that can encourage us, as individuals and as organizations, to do the right thing.
Wishing you all bonnes vacances!
Jill Tellier, Gaël Duez & the Green IO team
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What’s been happening lately in the Green IO community?
🎙️ Podcast episodes
#60 “Why tech companies shouldn’t de-prioritize future readiness” with Rainer Karcher. Listen | 5-mins read
#59 “Debriefing QCon sustainability track” with Erica Pisani. Listen | 5-mins read
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🔔 Never miss an episode!
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🎤 Green IO conferences
Munich, July 2nd - 3rd 2025
Will AI adoption stop the positive momentum in green software engineering across the DACH region? To get some answers, get tickets and check the agenda here.
London, September 23rd - 24th 2025
"Good for the Planet, Good for Business?" Simple question but complex answers… and we expect a massive turnout of responsible technologists to get some of them, 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 and submit your talk here.
Singapore, April 14th - 15th 2026
A third edition focusing on concrete use cases in the intersection of FinOps and GreenOps. Get an early bird ticket here and submit your talk here.
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Do you want to contribute to Green IO?
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# Couldn’t attend? # Listen # Watch # Read # Tools # Participate # Study # Attend
What else has popped up on our Tech & Sustainability radar?
# Couldn’t attend?… we’ve got it covered for you
Green IO Munich, 2-3 July 2025, Munich (GER)
Read on for key takeaways (the full version of Fiona’s wrap up article will be available on our blog):
Learning from ants: from sole problem-solvers to swarm mentality. (Claire Thornewill)
Follow your values: “values drive sustainability, technology helps you implement it” (Steffen Müller)
Green IT doesn’t have to be a tradeoff (GreenPixie)
Money & laws drive change (Ines Akrap)
Green IT is for everyone (Laurie Servais)
Responsibility: “Technology doesn’t have a moral compass. But we do!” (Rainer Karcher)
# Listen… We’re all ears
E405 of This Machine Kills dives into the how the technical qualities of AI are influencing issues of power and capital. EV E111 explores open source cloud footprints, whilst Tech Won’t save us E280 delves into Open AI’s pursuit of scale and its negative impact on people, privacy, and the planet. And Green Fix E10 reiterates the importance of bridging the two worlds of IT & sustainability to truly deliver lasting positive change.
# Watch… Sometimes video is worth its environmental footprint
After initially operating without a license or the required pollution controls, Elon Musk’s xAI Colossus data center has now received a 60-day notice of an intent to sue from a local environmental group - a prerequisite to filing a lawsuit under the Clean Air Act - after footage (Oil Field Witness) was released, showing plumes of pollution coming from gas turbines. Another case of Big Tech Politics 1 - Environmental Protection 0?
# Read… Our coffee-break reading this month
The Silicon Valley race for domination of AI / AGI hots up with Meta Platform’s announcement that it has finalized a $14.3 billion purchase of a 49% stake in data labeling startup Scale AI, and that it’s CE, Alexandr Wang, would be joining the elite team to push forward on technologies that surpass the limits of human cognition. At the same time, Microsoft has revealed a study on LRMs’ incapacity to maintain accuracy in the face of complex problems. And echoing E59 with Erica Pisani, (and Green Fix podcast - see above) this TNO Green IT value case highlights the need to bring together experts from IT and sustainability, to ensure that both IT and tech issues are are jointly embedded into core metrics of any sustainability strategy. A Wired article on AI energy consumption exposes the problems of transparent metrics and standardized methods for calculating GHG emissions, and Nvidia has released a Product Carbon Footprint summary for its HGX H100 baseboard (an accelerated computing platform).
# Tools… Skill-up for a sustainable future
SGA Standard - Scope 3.11 use of sold products (mobile). The Standard is designed to meet both the legal and societal expectations, as well as the practical requirements of companies operating within the games industry.
# Participate… One byte at a time
Sustainable AI Hackathon. Green Computing Foundation. August 2025, On-line / India.
CAT mini grants - apply for direct financial support for projects which support the wider CAT community.
# Study… We’re never too old to learn
Even if Microsoft’s study on the illusion of thinking, published at the beginning of the month (see also article above), shows that there are serious limitations to LRMs in generating detailed thinking processes, the notion of AI welfare is gaining foothold. Robustly agentic or even conscious AI systems are a possibility, through training models to develop introspection-like responsibilities. Plus, looking at hardware, the transformative potential of advanced cooling technologies on cloud infrastructure is presented in this study, demonstrating the benefits of a LCA approach. Re: software, the quality of code does matter, as shown in a recent paper evaluating the energy efficiency of code generated by LLMs, and a new study shows, once again, the increasing power demand driven by AI. And how the public understanding of AI's environmental impacts has been misshapen through both the media and scientific publications, warranting a call for increased data transparency for all.
# Attend… Meet fellow responsible technologists
Hot Carbon, 10-11 July 2025, Cambridge, Massachusetts, (USA)
Green IT Day, 2-3 Oct 2025, Montpellier & Toulouse (FR)
GreenTech Forum, 4-5 Nov 2025, Paris (FR)
EcoCompute 2025, 13-14 November 2025, Berlin (DE)
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🎯 Looking for an easy way to make an impact in sustainability?
Forward this email! 📧
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One last positive thought
A toolkit on how to build strong and effective backup power supplies owned by your local community. A useful resource given the intense weather episodes occurring all over the world!
See you next month!
Gaël DUEZ, Jill TELLIER & the Green IO Team