Environment Variables

TWiGS hosts Tzviya and Kate are joined by Ryan Sholin of Electricity Maps to discuss how global events impact electricity availability, cost, and carbon intensity. They highlight that improving efficiency and better utilizing existing power grids could reduce the need for new energy infrastructure. The conversation connects energy awareness with software design decisions, emphasizing that developers and organizations can play a role in sustainability by aligning workloads with cleaner energy and understanding the broader energy context behind digital systems.

Learn more about our people:
Tzviya Siegman: LinkedIn | Website
Ryan Sholin: LinkedIn | GitHub | Website
Kate Goldenring: LinkedIn | GitHub | Website

Find out more about the GSF:
The Green Software Foundation Website
Sign up to the Green Software Foundation Newsletter

News:
Exclusive: Google, Tesla, others tackle energy affordability | Axios [02:10]
Virginia to utilities: Do more with the existing power grid | CanaryMedia [03:38]
There's another energy market that may get hit harder than oil by Strait of Hormuz closure [10:08]
PUE Ranking - Paweł Czyżak on LinkedIn [14:44]
Markdown, llms.txt and AI crawlers | Dries Buytaert [25:44]
Datacentre developers face calls to disclose effect on UK’s net emissions | The Guardian [39:14]

Events:
LUT x Sustinaires | 25 Mar 7:15 AM CET (Remote) [41:29]
UX Jumpstart | 26 Mar 2:00 PM CET (Virtual) [41:46]
Are you speaking about Green Software? | GSF [41:59]

Resources:
Marc Brooker's Blog [06:32]
Environment Variables Ep 133: TWiGS: Who Pays for AI’s Energy Footprint? [07:09]
US data centre efficiency ranked by PUE - Rod McLaren: Words that work
TPU vs GPU: Which Is Better for AI Infrastructure in 2025? [19:57]
TPUs improved carbon-efficiency of AI workloads by 3x | Google Cloud Blog
Software Carbon Intensity for Artificial Intelligence [21:51]
Hugging Face AI Energy Score Project [22:43]
Google & Bing Warn: Markdown Files Can Increase Crawl Load and Cause SEO Issues [27:35]
Introducing Markdown for Agents [28:57]
agent-md | GitHub
w3c-cg / ai-content-disclosure | GitHub [30:02]
AI Preferences
Measuring for Reporting vs Measuring for Action | GSF
CarbonDB [34:22]

If you enjoyed this episode then please either:
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Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This Week in Green Software, Valeria, Adi, and Oli come together to explore the concept of Shift-Left Sustainability—the idea that environmental impact should be considered early in the software development lifecycle rather than after deployment. They discuss how better measurement, developer tooling, and practical incentives can help teams build more efficient and environmentally responsible software, why sustainability should be treated more like security, and highlight growing government interest in digital sustainability.

Learn more about our people:
Valeria Salis: LinkedIn | GitHub | Website
Aditya Manglik: LinkedIn | GitHub | Website
Oliver Winks: LinkedIn | GitHub | Website

Find out more about the GSF:
The Green Software Foundation Website
Sign up to the Green Software Foundation Newsletter

News:
Shift-Left Sustainability: How to develop green software by design | Kolaxis [03:42]
We nearly had power profiling in Chromium | Fershad [18:25]
GDSA Summit returns: building on our progress | Sustainable ICT [25:36]

Events:
Green Software Practitioner Study Day | 13 Mar 10:00 am GMT (Brighton) [31:22]
What Software Doesn’t “Count” | 17 Mar 6:00 pm CET (Barcelona) [3:19]
Reducing Cost and Carbon | 18 Mar 6:00 pm CET (Hamburg) [33:56]
LUT x Sustinaires | 25 Mar 7:15 am CET (Virtual) [34:55]
Green Software Italia | 30 Mar 6:30 pm CET (Milan) [35:18]
UX Jumpstart 26 Mar 2:00 pm CET (Virtual) [35:42]

If you enjoyed this episode then please either:
Follow, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts
Follow and rate on Spotify
Watch our videos on The Green Software Foundation YouTube Channel!
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Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Host Kate Goldenring is joined by Chris Adams and Tzviya Siegman for a news round-up on sustainable software. They dig into EnergyNet and the idea of routing electricity more like the internet, unpack the latest AI energy and greenwashing debates, and look at policy and research angles — from proactive water planning for data centers to a cap-and-trade style proposal for AI efficiency.

Learn more about our people:
Chris Adams: LinkedIn | GitHub | Website
Kate Goldenring: LinkedIn | Website
Tzviya Siegman: LinkedIn | Website

Find out more about the GSF:
The Green Software Foundation Website
Sign up to the Green Software Foundation Newsletter

News:
EnergyNet Task Force [03:50]
EnergyNet on GitHub [03:50]
EnergyNet expands to 280 apartments in Lund (Warp News) [03:50]
Is this EnergyNet thing legit? (Chris Adams) [03:50]
Sam Altman / OpenAI energy use and data centers (The Guardian) [12:20]
Big Tech says generative AI will save the planet - proof is thin (WIRED) [01:10]
Big tech greenwashing report (Ketan Joshi) [13:20]
Different kinds of AI in the climate context (Chris Adams) [15:00]
AI's Never Just One Thing: Different FLOPS for Different Folks (Hugging Face) [18:20]
Great Lakes region unprepared for increasing water use demands(Alliance for the Great Lakes) [30:10]
AI Cap-and-Trade: Efficiency Incentives for Accessibility and Sustainability [36:20]

If you enjoyed this episode then please either:
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Watch our videos on The Green Software Foundation YouTube Channel!
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Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Asim Hussain introduces more new co-hosts on this episode of TWiGS as they explore the evolving intersection of AI, infrastructure, and sustainability. The discussion covers the growing energy demands of AI workloads, the tension between innovation and environmental impact, and the role of standards and policy in guiding responsible growth. From data center expansion to practical steps engineers can take today, the hosts share insights on how the tech industry can balance rapid advancement with measurable climate accountability.

Learn more about our people:
Asim Hussain: LinkedIn | GitHub | Website
Aditya Manglik: LinkedIn | GitHub | Website
Carlos Pignatoro: LinkedIn | GitHub | Website
Oli Winks: LinkedIn | GitHub | Website
Valeria Salis: LinkedIn | GitHub | Website

Find out more about the GSF:
The Green Software Foundation Website
Sign up to the Green Software Foundation Newsletter

News:
Why AI's water problem might actually be an opportunity | World Economic Forum [06:13]
GreenOps - CloudBolt: Greener cloud usage multiplies with Kubernetes optimisation [23:51]
Enabled emissions: How AI helps to supercharge oil and gas production [35:05]

Events:
Sustainable AI: Your 2026 Playbook | 19 Feb 18:00 GMT (Virtual) [45:31]
Meme-tivism: Rethinking the Environmental Footprint of AI & ML | King's College London | 23 Feb (London) [45:54]
Code Green London | 24 Feb 18:30 GMT (London) [46:13]
Green Software Development Karlsruhe: How Apps Can Emit Less CO₂ | 03 Mar (Karlsruhe) [46:22]
Optimizing AI Inference: How to Cut Costs, Latency & Energy | 12 Mar 18:30 CET (Barcelona) [46:35]
AI, the ultimate green software challenge | 12 Mar 8:30 GMT (Virtual) [46:48]
AI & Sustainability | 12 Mar 15:00 AEDT (Sydney) [47:02]
Green Software Practitioner Study Day - Silicon Brighton | 13 Mar (Brighton) [47:12]

If you enjoyed this episode then please either:
Follow, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts
Follow and rate on Spotify
Watch our videos on The Green Software Foundation YouTube Channel!
Connect with us on Twitter, Github and LinkedIn!
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This Week in Green Software, Chris Adams is joined by new co-hosts Kate Goldenring and Tzviya Siegman to explore the latest stories on their radars. They unpack Microsoft’s community-first AI infrastructure pledge, the rise of gas-powered data centers, and the hidden embodied emissions behind AI models and storage hardware. The conversation also dives into the energy cost of AI prompts, new research measuring real browser energy use, and emerging models like billing AI by the kilowatt-hour. Together, they examine how transparency, standards, and smarter engineering decisions can shape a more sustainable digital future.

Learn more about our people:
Chris Adams: LinkedIn | GitHub | Website
Kate Goldenring: LinkedIn | Website
Tzviya Siegman: LinkedIn | Website

Find out more about the GSF:
The Green Software Foundation Website
Sign up to the Green Software Foundation Newsletter

News:
Building Community-First AI Infrastructure - Microsoft [05:00]
Microsoft Pledged to Save Water in the A.I. Era - The New York Times [08:29]
Building Community-First AI Infrastructure - Microsoft On the Issues
Betting big on data centers, U.S. now leads world for new gas power development - Global Energy Monitor [13:56]
The Robles v. Domino’s Settlement (And Why It Matters) [21:56]
From FLOPs to Footprints: The Resource Cost of Artificial Intelligence [23:53]
The Cost of Politeness in AI [29:54]
Green Coding Solutions: webNRG Released [36:50]
Energy-Aware Hosted Inference | Neuralwatt Portal [42:35]

Resources:
Environment Variables Ep 62: Greening Serverless w/ Kate Goldenring [11:24]
Environment Variables Ep 104: OCP, Wooden Datacentres and Cleaning up Datacentre Diesel w/ Karl Rabe [12:16]
GitHub - Green-Software-Foundation/real-time-cloud: Real Time Energy and Carbon Standards for Cloud Providers [14:56]
Web Sustainability Guidelines | W3C [20:14]
WCAG 2 Overview | Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) | W3C [21:00]
Software Carbon Intensity (SCI) Specification | GSF [23:22]
Ecoinvent [27:06]
Solar power in Finland - Energy [44:38]
On using solar & batteries to provide 90% of the world population with 90% of their electricity demand for below 90 €/MWh | Chris Adams
Solar and batteries can power the world
How Did This State Become the Data Center Capital of the World?
Subsidizing the Cloud: U.S. State Incentives to Data Centers
Scope True - Reality-Based Corporate Carbon Accounting For the Decarbonization
webNRG
GitHub - webNRG

If you enjoyed this episode then please either:
Follow, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts
Follow and rate on Spotify
Watch our videos on The Green Software Foundation YouTube Channel!
Connect with us on Twitter, Github and LinkedIn!
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.