Latest / Best of LinkedIn: Digital Transformation & Tech / Best of LinkedIn: Sustainability & Green ICT CW 48/ 49

Transcript

Best of LinkedIn: Sustainability & Green ICT CW 48/ 49 · Best of LinkedIn: Digital Transformation & Tech

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: This episode is provided by Thomas Alguyer and Frennis, based on the most relevant LinkedIn posts about sustainability in green ICT in CW-Forty-Eight and Forty-Nine.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Frennis supports ICT enterprises with market and competitive intelligence, decoding green software developments, benchmarking emerging standards, tracking regulatory shifts, and analyzing competitor strategies.
• 0:21
  Speaker 0: Welcome to the deep dive.
• 0:23
  Speaker 0: So our core mission today really is to get into the practical shifts happening right now in sustainability and green ICT.
• 0:29
  Speaker 0: I think we've moved past the phase of just setting these abstract far-off
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: goals.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: The conversation now is all about concrete, measurable execution.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: You can feel the pressure building.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: It
• 0:41
  Speaker 0: is.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Looking at the insights from the last few weeks, we really stood out.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: We're four critical areas where the industry is moving from potential to actual precision.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: We're going to look at the convergence of efficiency practices, so phenops and green ops.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: Then there's the immense and truly radical innovation happening in data centers.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: After that, the urgent challenge of measuring and dealing with the massive AI power surge.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: And finally, how policy and system design are really proving to be the ultimate drivers here.
• 1:12
  Speaker 0: Let's start with that convergence.
• 1:13
  Speaker 0: It's a great place to begin because it's the low hanging fruit, but with a huge impact.
• 1:19
  Speaker 0: We're talking about this mandate to integrate fine ops and green ops.
• 1:22
  Speaker 0: Yes.
• 1:22
  Speaker 0: And what's fascinating is that at their core, both of them have the exact same goal, eliminating waste.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: And the scale of that waste when you see the numbers is just startling.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: I saw a post from Kamalash Kumar, for instance, who put a clear number
• 1:35
  Speaker 0: on it.
• 1:35
  Speaker 0: What was it?
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: Roughly, thirty percent of cloud spending is just wasted on idle or mismanaged resources.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: And every dollar wasted there is compute cycles wasted.
• 1:45
  Speaker 0: Which translates directly into needless carbon emissions.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: So the logic is powerful.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: If you make the system more financially efficient, you automatically make it greener.
• 1:54
  Speaker 0: That's the point Bjorn Stengel and Philippa Vinara from IDC were making.
• 1:58
  Speaker 0: They see these ops practices as delivering truly efficient cloud solutions because they break down the silos.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: The silos between finance, product, engineering.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: All
• 2:08
  Speaker 0: of them.
• 2:08
  Speaker 0: It drives collaboration and data-driven decisions.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: But isn't the real challenge getting engineers you know, whose main focus is performance and delivery to actually prioritize the planet alongside the budget, that's been a struggle for years.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: It has,
• 2:22
  Speaker 0: but that's where the implementation of green ops becomes so important.
• 2:26
  Speaker 0: Kevin Leslie from AWS re-invent, he noted that the key is linking the budget directly to the planet.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: How so?
• 2:32
  Speaker 0: You have to give engineers cost recommendations together with the environmental metrics.
• 2:37
  Speaker 0: So here's the cost, and here's the greenhouse gas, the kilowatt hours, the water use.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: So it makes it a mandated priority, not just a nice-to-have suggestion.
• 2:45
  Speaker 0: Instantly.
• 2:46
  Speaker 0: And that immediately pushes the focus right into software architecture.
• 2:50
  Speaker 0: Anita Schutler highlighted this.
• 2:51
  Speaker 0: She said future-proof IT systems depend on smart, flexible design.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: So modular architecture, being conscious about the tech you select.
• 2:59
  Speaker 0: And interoperability.
• 3:00
  Speaker 0: That flexibility is everything for green software.
• 3:03
  Speaker 0: It lets your systems react to the energy grid in real time.
• 3:06
  Speaker 0: Your computing loads become movable.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: So you can pause long processes, adapt service requirements, and
• 3:12
  Speaker 0: chase renewable energy when it's available instead of just running nonstop on whatever the grid gives you, which might be fossil fuels,
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: which brings us to the code itself.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: Then if architecture is the canvas, the code is the paint.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: We need green paint.
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 3:26
  Speaker 0: But you know, the push for true green coding standards is it's hitting some hurdles.
• 3:31
  Speaker 0: Johnny Cusso pointed out that while Phenops is pretty established.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: We can measure dollars easily.
• 3:36
  Speaker 0: Right.
• 3:37
  Speaker 0: But measuring the carbon impact of green coding is still really complex.
• 3:41
  Speaker 0: It's hard to measure the precise impact of one line of code.
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: Too many variables.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: Hardware, the grid, resource intensity.
• 3:49
  Speaker 0: It's a challenge, but efforts are gaining traction.
• 3:52
  Speaker 0: Cutsa did mention some open source tools that Creedango that are starting to pop up.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: And what do they do?
• 3:57
  Speaker 0: They extend existing systems like SonarCube with eco design rules.
• 4:00
  Speaker 0: So it brings that environmental feedback right into the developer's workflow.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: Okay, so let's move from the abstract code to the very physical infrastructure.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: Theme two, data centers.
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: This is where the challenge feels most immediate.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: Oh, for sure.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: I saw a post from Daniel Amor noting the scale we're heading for.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: Global AI energy demand could hit one One thousand terawatt hours by twenty twenty six.
• 4:24
  Speaker 0: One thousand terawatt hours.
• 4:26
  Speaker 0: That's that's the consumption of an entire industrial country.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: Our grids just aren't ready for that kind of sudden demand.
• 4:31
  Speaker 0: So the response has to be intense innovation.
• 4:34
  Speaker 0: And we're seeing a heavy focus on circularity, on turning waste into value.
• 4:39
  Speaker 0: Like
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: waste heat.
• 4:40
  Speaker 0: Exactly.
• 4:41
  Speaker 0: Peter Chanoff and Tina David Sainin highlighted the huge global movement toward waste heat reuse.
• 4:47
  Speaker 0: Look at the Microsoft and Fordham project in Finland.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: That's the world's largest heat project, isn't it?
• 4:52
  Speaker 0: It is.
• 4:53
  Speaker 0: It's set to provide up to forty percent of the district heating for multiple cities.
• 4:56
  Speaker 0: That's a fundamental paradigm shift.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: That's massive.
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: It changes the data center from just being a resource drain to being a core energy provider for a whole community.
• 5:05
  Speaker 0: And policy is starting to lock this in.
• 5:08
  Speaker 0: Muffit Yilmaz Gokman noted that Germany is making this mandatory.
• 5:12
  Speaker 0: Starting in twenty twenty six, data centers will have to reuse ten percent of their waste heat.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: That's a powerful accelerator.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: We're also seeing big shifts in power resilience technology away from just diesel generators.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: Thank
• 5:24
  Speaker 0: goodness.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: Joaquin Rodriguez, Antibon, and Anita Falls were pointing to the rise of hydrogen fuel cells.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: Relco is using Toyota fuel cells, for instance, as a clean, zero-mission backup.
• 5:35
  Speaker 0: That's a huge move, and it forces a new way of thinking about long-term design.
• 5:40
  Speaker 0: Forrest Halualani of Compass Data Centers talks about designing for the next hundred years.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: the mindset away from being a drain to being a positive grid partner.
• 5:50
  Speaker 0: Yes, and the tech is getting there.
• 5:52
  Speaker 0: Pierre Queer also mentioned that adopting silicon carbide, or six-leash technology, is contributing to this new level of efficiency in the power infrastructure itself.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: Okay, hold on.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: Here's where it gets really interesting.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: I mean, it borders on science fiction.
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: Jonathan Mattis-Glender reported on a truly radical solution.
• 6:08
  Speaker 0: Which is?
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: Orbital data centers.
• 6:10
  Speaker 0: In space.
• 6:11
  Speaker 0: That sounds like something from a novel, but it's actually happening, isn't it?
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: It is.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: SpaceX confirmed the launch of Starlink V-III satellites in twenty-twenty-six, and they're promising massive computing power in
• 6:22
  Speaker 0: orbit.
• 6:22
  Speaker 0: Wow.
• 6:23
  Speaker 0: But beyond the novelty, what are the real environmental advantages?
• 6:27
  Speaker 0: Why do this?
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: Well, it tackles the three biggest bottlenecks on the ground.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: Land, power and water.
• 6:34
  Speaker 0: Okay, so in orbit, you get endless solar energy, zero land footprint and zero water for cooling.
• 6:39
  Speaker 0: That's a big one.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: A huge one.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: Heat just radiates into space.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: It completely bypasses our terrestrial resource constraints.
• 6:47
  Speaker 0: That really puts the scale of the crisis into perspective.
• 6:50
  Speaker 0: which moves us to the software driving all that demand, the AI carbon tsunami.
• 6:54
  Speaker 0: Right.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: We know AI can be a powerful enabler.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: Microsoft's Sparrow project for wildlife tracking is a great example.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: But the environmental impact is huge and often very opaque.
• 7:05
  Speaker 0: And this is where we see the strategic cost.
• 7:07
  Speaker 0: Rianne Riemanns noted that tech companies are quietly readjusting their sustainability goals because of AI's energy impact.
• 7:13
  Speaker 0: Really?
• 7:14
  Speaker 0: Yes.
• 7:15
  Speaker 0: The discussion is shifting away from climate pledges to the tactical need to just secure energy, even if that means using fossil fuels.
• 7:21
  Speaker 0: It suggests a kind of operational desperation.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: Well, it's hard to secure energy when you can't even measure what you're using.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: Paul Johnston pointed out that any of those energy-per-prompt claims you see.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: They're pure guesswork.
• 7:34
  Speaker 0: Because no one is publishing verifiable data.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: No one.
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: And Will Nordberg added that even the low numbers we do see, they only measure the spark, the initial process.
• 7:44
  Speaker 0: They ignore the whole ecosystem, the cooling, the networks, the orchestration.
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: It's like measuring the apple while ignoring the entire orchard.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: It's why standardization is so urgent.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: How do you compare one LLM against another?
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: That's
• 7:56
  Speaker 0: the exact problem Matthew Francois is tackling with the one token model, or OTM.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: The OTM, okay, explain that.
• 8:02
  Speaker 0: Think of it as a bridge.
• 8:03
  Speaker 0: It lets generative AI usage be calculated using the existing software carbon intensity or SCI framework, and it uses a normalized unit called the Antarctica token.
• 8:14
  Speaker 0: The
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: Antarctica token, I like that, gives us a standard unit of measurement.
• 8:17
  Speaker 0: which we desperately need because the new AI energy score V-II data that Boris Gumbazichkov and Dr.
• 8:23
  Speaker 0: Soshil Chuyoni presented, it's a massive reality check.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: What's the key takeaway from it?
• 8:28
  Speaker 0: It's that the reasoning models, you know, the ones that are truly analyzing and synthesizing information, they consume hundreds of times more energy than the non-reasoning versions.
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: Hundreds of times, wow.
• 8:40
  Speaker 0: An efficiency is less predictable.
• 8:42
  Speaker 0: We can't just assume that a newer model is automatically a more efficient one anymore.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: And that gets even worse when you look at massive video models.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: I saw Nathaniel Barola's analysis of the potential consumption of Sora II.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: He projected it could require four hundred and eight megawatts of power at scale.
• 8:58
  Speaker 0: That is just an astronomical number.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: It is.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: And his analysis suggested that could generate one point nine million tons of kuyo annually.
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: Whether that's the maximum or typical usage, it proves the environmental conversation has to be a primary design constraint now.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: It can't be an afterthought.
• 9:14
  Speaker 0: Which brings it all back to conscious usage.
• 9:17
  Speaker 0: Cynthia Jebor's observation was so spot-on.
• 9:19
  Speaker 0: Sustainable AI means using it where it creates real value, not just because you can.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: Optimize the process first before you automate it with a power-hungry model.
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 9:29
  Speaker 0: And this leads us perfectly into our final theme.
• 9:31
  Speaker 0: policy, procurement, and what we're calling systemic coherence.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: Right, because you can invent all the great tech in the world.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: But if the system doesn't reward its adoption, it just won't scale.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: Precisely.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: There was a fantastic study on this by Remy Pakhu about AI optimized microgrids.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: It's a really concrete example.
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: The AI achieved an eighteen percent cost reduction.
• 9:52
  Speaker 0: So great economic performance.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: Great.
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: But the environmental benefits only aligned where the price signals reflected carbon intensity.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: In South Australia, for instance, where energy price tracks how green the grid is, the AI chose the green path.
• 10:08
  Speaker 0: But not elsewhere.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: In places like California, where price and carbon are decoupled, the AI could actually induce environmental costs.
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: It just optimized for the cheapest dollar, regardless of the source.
• 10:20
  Speaker 0: The AI does exactly what we tell it to.
• 10:22
  Speaker 0: It's a faithful servant.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: That just reinforces this need for systemic change.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: Julio C. Serrano, who was the lead author on the ERA report, argued we have to stop seeing data centers as just passive consumers.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: They
• 10:33
  Speaker 0: need to be integrated energy assets that provide flexibility to the grid.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: Not just demand from it.
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: And that structural change needs top-down buy-in.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: Sanjay Potter and Kerry O'Donnell stress that embedding sustainability into the DNA of digital transformation leads to faster innovation.
• 10:50
  Speaker 0: It makes it a business imperative, not a line item in a CSR report.
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: And ultimately, the stick is reinforcing the carrot.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: Dr.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: Katharina Grimmie and Muffet Yilmaz Gokman both noted the rising regulatory pressure, especially the EU's CSRD.
• 11:05
  Speaker 0: The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: Yes, and that demands transparency and standardized reporting on ICT's footprint.
• 11:12
  Speaker 0: And that mandatory reporting is the structural lock-in.
• 11:16
  Speaker 0: It makes this data, whether it's carbon per token or heat reuse, an auditable business risk, a core financial concern.
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: So if you synthesize everything we've covered, It feels like the whole industry is moving from talking about potential to demanding precision.
• 11:30
  Speaker 0: I think that's a perfect summary.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: We have the tools now, like the one token model green ops frameworks, and we have the technology from hydrogen fuel cells to orbital compute.
• 11:38
  Speaker 0: So this brings us to the real structural takeaway.
• 11:41
  Speaker 0: The posts we've seen show clearly that the biggest barrier to scaling green ICT is an invention anymore.
• 11:46
  Speaker 0: It's governance.
• 11:48
  Speaker 0: For true sustainability, we have to ensure that the economic systems we use, procurement, energy pricing, financial reporting, are all structurally coherent with our environmental goals.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: So that doing was financially efficient.
• 12:01
  Speaker 0: Always aligns with doing what is environmentally responsible.
• 12:04
  Speaker 0: If we can get that coherence, that's the next frontier.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: If you enjoy this deep dive, new episodes drop every two weeks.
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: Also check out our other editions on cloud, digital products and services, artificial intelligence, and ICT and Tech Insights, HealthTech, DefenseTech.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: Thank you for tuning in for this deep dive.
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: Make sure to follow us to stay well informed.