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Tag: climate change

SEC Introduces Enhanced Climate-Related Disclosure Rules
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has adopted new rules to enhance and standardize climate-related disclosures by public companies and in public offerings. These rules aim to meet investor demands for consistent, comparable, and reliable information on the financial effects of climate-related risks on companies’ operations and their risk management strategies.

The Importance of Transparency

According to SEC Chair Gary Gensler, the initiative is based on the principle that investors should be able to make informed decisions based on companies’ complete and truthful disclosures. The regulations introduce comprehensive requirements for disclosure of significant climate-related risks and their efforts to address them.

Key Aspects of the SEC Rules:
- Mandatory disclosure of climate-related risks that significantly affect or are likely to affect a company’s strategy, operations, or financial condition.
- Details on efforts to mitigate or adapt to climate-related risks, including financial expenditures.
- Disclosure requirements for climate-related targets or goals and their impacts on the company.
- Requirements for certain companies to report Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions, with an accompanying assurance report. (Scope 1 emissions are direct emissions from owned or controlled sources, while Scope 2 emissions are indirect emissions from the generation of purchased electricity, steam, heating, and cooling consumed by the reporting company.)
Phased Implementation and Review Process

Set to become effective 60 days after publication in the Federal Register, the rules will be implemented in phases based on the filer status of registrants.

Strategic Implications for DevOps and Cloud Computing

The new SEC rules could catalyze a strategic pivot in DevOps and cloud computing towards more sustainable practices. Specifically, they may further incentivize the development of tools and methodologies for accurately measuring and managing Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions. New roles or teams may be dedicated to environmental impact analysis within IT departments. These shifts would ensure sustainability becomes a core consideration in tech deployment strategies.

Driving Innovation for Greener Technology

Software solutions that automate the tracking of energy consumption and emissions data across cloud and on-premises environments may see increasing demand. Particularly as organizations seek actionable insights for reducing carbon footprints.

This emphasis on detailed climate-related disclosures may also serve to drive innovation in cloud infrastructure design and management. For example, cloud service providers might introduce new features or services that enable customers to more easily assess and optimize the environmental impact of their cloud usage.

This could lead to the adoption of more energy-efficient computing resources, such as serverless architectures. Dynamically allocating resources could be prioritized to reduce unnecessary energy consumption

Advancing Eco-friendly Solutions with AI

These new rules amplify the global lean into AI for faster and more effective solutions. Utilizing predictive analytics and machine learning, AI can accurately forecast computing demand and make changes in real-time. This ensures that energy consumption closely matches actual usage, minimizing waste and reducing both operational costs and environmental impact.

Balancing AI’s Energy Demand

The flip side, though, is the high energy demands of AI. The new SEC rules will likely place an increasing focus on creating and implementing AI algorithms that are both potent and energy-efficient.

Look for greater focus on AI-driven cooling systems for data centers and the use “lightweight” AI models that require less data and computing power for training and

operation. Such models aim to maintain high efficiency while drastically cutting down the energy needed for their training and inference phases. All striving towards the broader goal of making AI more environmentally friendly.

Sustainability and Innovation: The Path Ahead

With the implementation of the SEC’s new rules, the landscape of corporate reporting and technology development is poised for significant change, emphasizing the importance of sustainability and environmental considerations in business strategies and operational practices.
March 6, 2024
How Open Source Software Powers High-Impact Climate Science

According to the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), the past nine years have been the nine warmest since record-keeping began in 1880, and 2023 is on track to set another record. Making the hard decisions involved in addressing this global crisis requires analyzing and understanding enormous quantities of data using sophisticated computational methods. Luckily, innovations from the open source software community are helping revolutionize climate science, letting researchers quickly derive insights from data.

Delivering Critical Collaboration

Modern science relies heavily on complex computational and numerical analysis techniques. However, the massive amount of measurement and simulation data available in fields like climate science makes traditional approaches impractical. With petabyte-scale data, researchers can no longer expect to download or obtain physical copies of entire datasets, nor can their local workstations or laptops handle datasets of that size once they arrive. Moving the scientists to the data is also impractical since researchers all over the world need to make use of the same data.

Instead, scientists and engineers from Pangeo.io and other global collaborations have developed a robust set of open-source tools for working efficiently with large, remote datasets, bypassing restrictions from proprietary software that’s limited to small datasets installed locally. Instead of monolithic commercial applications or inflexible Fortran codebases, modern researchers use flexible and lightweight approaches for distributing computation across cloud computing resources shared between many collaborators. These innovations are critical for climate science since further delay could lead to catastrophic challenges in combating global warming.

Deriving Faster, Flexible Data for Greater Output at Scale

Python’s scientific ecosystem, in particular, has gained prominence and is top of mind when considering open-source platforms best suited to execute climate solutions. Incoming graduate students more often know Python than any other programming language now that Python has taken over as the world’s most popular programming language. Python’s open-source ecosystem includes a wide variety of packages, each focusing on a specific area of functionality. These components evolve quickly and regularly introduce new features while maintaining compatibility through standard protocols. Unlike a monolithic, centrally designed approach, Python’s open ecosystem provides more flexibility when scaling data and solutions.

In high-impact fields like climate science, the goal is to enable scientists and researchers to concentrate on their domain-specific questions rather than becoming entangled in the intricacies of data manipulation and resource management. The numerical Python stack of open-source tools, combined with the ability to access available data in the cloud on a massive scale, facilitates this division of labor. Scientists can focus on writing software for the analysis parts specific to their expertise, meaning faster progress toward climate solutions and products.

With modern cloud-computing approaches, it makes more sense to move computation to the data rather than vice versa (since code is much smaller and more portable than data). With a platform like Jupyter running on a remote cluster and remote Python kernels as the execution environment, scientists can leverage the same infrastructure that hosts massive datasets in cloud object stores. Improvements in software technology and data formats also make it simple to access specific chunks of very large files, such as the temperature records associated with one particular city out of the entire world’s data. Accessing data becomes fast, cost-effective and scalable, bypassing traditional workflows involving repeatedly downloading large datasets consisting primarily of data not needed for a particular analysis.

For climate science specifically, this flexible remote-computing approach also means easier collaboration between developers and scientists to create innovations that could move climate studies and solutions forward. Distributed computing technologies such as Dask, Ray and Spark enable parallel and out-of-core computing, allowing for processing larger datasets at higher speeds. Several remote Jupyter-based services now exist, enabling even the main Python process (the “kernel”) to run remotely while utilizing the browser as an interactive development platform. Because all these tools are open, researchers can apply emerging technologies such as machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) techniques as soon as they are developed without waiting for software and hardware manufacturers to catch up.

Creating Data Visualizations and Dashboarding

For humans to understand and validate the data and the steps involved in analysis requires visualization at every stage, which is difficult when the data is too large to transfer locally for display. New open-source tools like Datashader and VegaFusion offer a server-side rendering of even the largest datasets, efficiently rendering distributed datasets into a viewable image and then transferring only that image to a scientist’s local browser for display. Matplotlib, HoloViews, Altair, Plotly and hvPlot in Python, along with Makie.jl for Julia, now allow server-side rendering to be embedded into fully interactive plots in a web browser, letting researchers explore datasets and identify interesting features or detect issues with data quality or analysis steps. The Panel and Dash dashboarding tools in Python allow these plots to be combined into complete web applications for researchers to share their interactive analyses, all without any proprietary tools or restrictions (see this USGS wind turbine application as an example).

In a field with such a dire need for fast innovation, open-source technology is crucial to providing the creativity and speed required for climate scientists to fight global warming. The collaborative and transparent delivery of innovation is what the scientific community is increasingly counting on.

Dr. Martin Durant, staff software engineer at Anaconda, contributed to this article.

November 9, 2023
How Enterprise Software Architects can Design for Sustainability

Organizations of all sizes are feeling the pressure to introduce more aggressive sustainability measures to combat climate change. For example, most cloud service providers have announced significant climate pledges to either reduce or offset their carbon emissions. But these initiatives can only go far to move the needle—it’s up to individual companies and departments to participate in curbing their climate impact, and DevOps certainly has a role to play in enacting positive change.

One way to design for sustainability is to optimize information technology systems to reduce waste. Enterprise IT typically supports a lot of unnecessary technical debt and perpetuates toilsome tasks that contribute to energy inefficiencies. Removing unused instances and features or idle workloads that aren’t contributing value could be an easy way to reduce waste. Yet other optimizations will require more effort.

I recently chatted with André Christ, co-founder and CEO of LeanIX, to discover what techniques enterprise-level software architects can use to get the most out of their technology modernization efforts while leaving the least carbon footprint. According to Christ, optimizing existing processes, using cloud-native technologies and leveraging value stream management are some tactics architects can take to “do more with less.”

1. Match Technology to Sustainability Targets

First, technology leaders must understand the capabilities of their business that could help contribute to meeting sustainability targets. “This requires understanding and systematic mapping,” said Christ. “It’s really about understanding what you can do as a company to contribute to sustainability in a more holistic way.”

For example, a routing and logistics provider might optimize operations by redesigning its floor plan to maximize efficiency and reduce energy use. Similarly, Christ recommended software professionals take stock of their existing capabilities to determine what should change. This could equate to discovering internal microservices that aid one department and extending them across the entire organization.

Optimizing data transfers is another way to create a leaner IT system. For example, teams could reduce constant polling by eliminating overfetching and underfetching or embracing a new API standard, like GraphQL, said Christ. Cutting out these superfluous calls reduces unneeded energy consumption.

2. Ensure Cloud-Architected, Not Lift-and-Shifted

Cloud migrations can reap significant benefits in terms of scalability and flexibility. But not every cloud migration delivers tangible sustainability benefits. AWS identified six unique strategies for migrating applications into the cloud: Rehosting (known as lift-and-shift), replatforming, repurchasing, refactoring, retiring and retaining. While early gains may be met simply by rehosting applications, replatforming or refactoring them completely with cloud-native components will likely deliver the best optimizations.

“If you only lift-and-shift applications into the cloud, they will keep running just as inefficiently as a virtual machine,” said Christ. Therefore, architects should design for cloud-native whenever possible rather than simply porting legacy applications to the cloud. On the other hand, it may be prudent to replace specific legacy components with SaaS or retire them altogether. As such, it’s crucial to analyze your existing landscape before making a cloud migration to ensure changes are both cost-effective and advancing sustainability goals.

3. Practice Value Stream Management

Practicing value stream management is another potential strategy to cut bloat by ensuring product teams always create more value for the end customer. Planview defined value stream management as such:

“Value Stream Management is a management technique or practice that focuses on increasing the flow of business value from customer request to customer delivery.”

This frame of mind could help engineers make more streamlined decisions about what they’re creating. But to achieve value stream management, organizations will require enhanced visibility into how individual services perform, their dependencies under the hood and their approximate emissions.

The core question you should be asking product teams, said Christ, is how carbon-efficiently are you operating in relation to the number of users you are serving? The answers will highlight which aspects of the business require the most optimization.

4. Tie Sustainability to the Business Bottom Line

Many sustainability pledges are founded on carbon offsetting, in which the company purchases “offsets” of its emissions, usually by planting trees or preserving forests. But, the practice of carbon offsetting has received criticism as being ineffective at stemming rising global temperature levels. So what does an honest climate pledge look like that’s more than greenwash? Well, perhaps one more closely associated with the bottom line.

Taking the idea of value stream management one step further, Christ argued that a real climate pledge would involve reducing carbon footprint by a certain percentage for each new dollar generated. As a business scales and its revenue increases, it should constantly reduce emissions in parallel with this growth. This would equate to assigning a dollar value for every CO2 ton and putting it into the balance sheet, said Christ.

Doing More With Less

Nations are striving to reduce carbon emissions through sweeping legislation. Yet, national goals will be insufficient to meet the target decline of 43% percent by 2030 and net zero by 2050, the United Nations reported. Thus, it will take effort from the private sector, as well.

We’ve identified some steps above to do more with less, yet many current, unsustainable practices are culturally ingrained, making them challenging to change. It will be the work of enterprise software architects to break it down and apply smarter designs to cloud-native applications. This will likely require centralizing views of internal services to enhance visibility and reporting. “You need good visibility into what you’re building and what it’s composed of to reduce the footprint,” said Christ.

December 19, 2022
DevOps, Drought and Climate | Meta❤️PTP

Welcome to The Long View—where we peruse the news of the week and strip it to the essentials. Let’s work out what really matters.

This week: Data centers cause climate change, and Meta is rolling out Precision Time Protocol. (more…)

November 21, 2022
Theranos’s Holmes VC Reverb | 5G C-Band Marches On | Mozilla Jumps Shark

Welcome to The Long View—where we peruse the news of the week and strip it to the essentials. Let’s work out what really matters.

This week: The conviction of Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes leads to greater scrutiny of startups, higher-frequency 5G NR is creeping towards reality, and Mozilla gets criticized for promoting climate-harming scams.

1. Holmes Case Causes Valley Rethink?

First up this week: Elizabeth Holmes has been found guilty of defrauding Theranos investors. But how will the affair change Silicon Valley’s startup-and-funding culture?

Analysis: Don’t fake it—just make it.

This could be a seminal moment, causing investors to look more closely at startup founders and their outlandish promises. On the other hand, key Theranos investors—e.g., Murdoch, Cox, DeVoss—hardly fit the mold of Silicon Valley VCs.

David Streitfeld: The Epic Rise and Fall

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s creation … Jay Gatsby … was a bootlegger [and] sold fake bonds. Ms. Holmes chose Silicon Valley, the last and greatest of all human dreams. [She] was a natural salesperson, as good at bending reality as Steve Jobs himself.
…
She and her deputy and boyfriend, Ramesh Balwani … thought they could brazen it out in the Silicon Valley tradition until they had something that actually worked. [But] the verdict signaled the end of an era. In Silicon Valley, where the line between talk and achievement is often vague, there is finally a limit. … It is an epic rise and fall that will be chewed over in the coffee shops and juice bars of Palo Alto, Calif., until the tech industry departs [for] off-world colonies.
…
So where does this conviction leave … her investors and former fans? Ripe for the next huckster that comes along, probably. Some Silicon Valley promises are so sweet we just can’t get enough of them. Immortality. Crypto. Flying cars. Mars. Digital harmony. Wealth beyond compare.

Think different, thinks DeanonymizedCoward:

[There’s a] fine line between bombastic marketing spam, “fake it ’til you make it” pitches, and outright fraud. … The first is repugnant and sometimes unethical, but generally legal.
…
[But] If your product requires bull**** to get funded—even if it ultimately works—you’re a fraud. … Regulatory reforms … and a sort of corporate death penalty … can fix a lot of this by making it less financially practical to engage in ****ty behavior.

Who else is to blame? Ask DS999:

I am sure some of her investors didn’t really care whether it worked. They just wanted to get in early, ride the hype train up, and sell before actual results mattered.

2. FAA and 5G Carriers Kiss and Make Up

Higher-frequency 5G NR is creeping towards reality in the U.S., thanks to the FAA backing down. After the aviation regulator had vetoed C-band deployment—based on precious little evidence—it looks like as much as 280 MHz of extra spectrum is now ready to switch on.

Analysis: Nomadic DevOps gets more bandwidth

While band 77 is nowhere near the much-vaunted “FR2” extremely high frequency bands, this is a useful chunk of extra spectrum for mobile and nomadic apps. Next stop: ubiquitous Ka-band.

Jon Brodkin: FAA agrees not to seek any more 5G delays

The Federal Aviation Administration tentatively agreed not to seek any more 5G delays from AT&T and Verizon, potentially ending a battle over the aviation industry’s unproven claim that 5G … will interfere with airplane altimeters. [Their] C-Band spectrum licenses are for the frequencies from 3.7 GHz to 3.98 GHz.
…
The deal incorporates voluntary commitments that AT&T and Verizon previously made, including “C-Band radio exclusion zones” around airports for six months. [They] modeled the exclusion zones after those used in France, which are 910×2100 meters.
…
Assuming there are no further problems, AT&T and Verizon would be able to use their spectrum licenses without extra restrictions after July 5. … President Biden applauded the agreement … calling it “a significant step in the right direction.”

In summary? Here’s Dieter Bohn:

The agency in charge of airplanes is mad about wireless things. But the agency in charge of wireless things and the companies that make them lost a game of chicken.
…
GREAT JOB AMERICA. … I always said I wanted Internet Service Providers to be Dumb Pipes, but I never expected them to be this dumb.

Has anyone read the FAA’s detailed report? bburdge has:

I can see why the FAA is backing down here now, it only makes sense when your key report could be paraphrased as: “We got a couple grad students to run some basic model comparisons … using altimeter data from the aviation industry (with a proven track record of lying to us) and then went golfing for eight months before publishing … but didn’t bother … to actually test anything.”

3. Mozilla Forgets its Values

Firefox custodian, the Mozilla Foundation, has angered many by promoting a “grossly irresponsible” “Ponzi scheme” that harms the environment. What is this awful thing? I hear you ask. It’s cryptocurrency.

Analysis: Imaginary money is bad—is this the last straw for Mozilla?

Less than a year ago, Mozilla said it wants to be carbon-neutral, but it’s already reneged on that promise: Distributed proof-of-work systems require … well, work. And that work uses ridiculous amounts of energy per DeFi transaction. Electricity production is a zero-sum game, so cryptocurrencies and NFTs cause climate change by emitting ridiculous amounts of CO₂e.

Liam Proven: Mozilla founder blasts browser maker

A few days ago, Mozilla Foundation invited netizens on Twitter to send in cryptocurrency donations. … This move by the Firefox browser maker rapidly drew criticism.
…
As recently as September, Moz’s web-standards lead Tantek Çelik slammed cryptocurrencies as being unsustainable, stating: “[They] are harmful for sustainability. … Their energy requirements grow without any discernible upper bound, which is grossly irresponsible given the global environmental crisis.”
…
Mozilla has accepted crypto-coin donations for years, perhaps as part of its long-ongoing efforts to alienate its own users: It’s only the payment provider that changed.

Chief among critics was Jamie “jwz” Zawinski:

I founded Mozilla and I’m here to say **** you and **** this. Everyone involved in the project should be witheringly ashamed of this decision to partner with planet-incinerating Ponzi grifters.
…
Stop saying you were promised flying cars. Unless you were born in 1935, you weren’t promised flying cars, you were promised a cyberpunk corporate dystopia.

It’s a shark-jump moment thinks Jeremy Keith:

The most convincing argument I’ve heard yet for switching away from Firefox as my main browser comes from Mozilla. I wasn’t expecting that plot twist.

The Moral of the Story: What is safety to one is not always safety to another.

You have been reading The Long View by Richi Jennings. You can contact him at @RiCHi or tlv@richi.uk.

Image: Benjamin Hayward (via Unsplash)

January 6, 2022
Sustainability No Longer Just a Buzzword for Cloud IT

A recent CloudBolt survey on IT sustainability finds that sustainability is no longer just a buzzword — the market is demanding real change, and it appears that environmental concerns finally are influencing large IT investments. For example, 67% say that a cloud provider’s sustainability initiatives are important in deciding whether to do business with them. A significant portion of organizations are even willing to pay a premium to support green initiatives!

Below, I’ll review the report to find its major takeaways. We’ll see how sustainability is directing real action in cloud IT and briefly compare how the market perceives current green initiatives among three top cloud providers: AWS, GCP and Azure.

Sustainability Gains Real-World Traction

In June and July 2021, CloudBolt polled 256 global CxOs and tech leaders on its Pulse platform, and found that 76% of respondents now consider climate change an existential threat. Not only are IT purchasers factoring compute and cost, but a sustainability conscience is now influencing executives to direct sweeping change. In fact, 79% of respondents indicate their IT departments are expected to help their companies achieve specific sustainability initiatives driven by the board of directors of the C-suite.

Interestingly, other studies found that a sustainability commitment results in tangible business outcomes. For instance, 88% of the research conducted by Oxford University and Arabesque showed that solid environmental, social and governance (ESG) practices result in better operational performance of firms and higher profits. This study also noted that 80% of the time, a company’s stock price is positively influenced by sustainability practices.

Climate Conscience Guides Cloud Choices

Most organizations now consider a cloud vendor’s sustainability initiatives when choosing whether to do business with that provider. A full 78% of respondents agree that the public/private cloud choices they make can materially affect the environment for better or worse. New environmental cloud commitments not only attempt to minimize carbon emissions from their data centers but factor in ecological ramifications and aim to erase companies’ historical carbon footprints, as well.

Cloud consumers also want to contribute to addressing these green initiatives. An impressive 79% of respondents indicate that they will pay a premium to work with vendors who incorporate sustainability into their business. And 41% of companies are willing to pay a premium of 11 % to 15% of their current bills. This shows that sustainability is now a vital factor within the marketplace, and companies are willing to pay the price to increase their own environmental standing.

Though this commitment is undoubtedly growing, the report did find that operational requirements such as security, cost and agility, still rank significantly higher than sustainability when comparing cloud providers. Though IT professionals recognize climate change as an existential threat, they still have day jobs and must keep operations moving.

AWS: King of Green Clouds

Slightly more than half (51%) of respondents agree that the industry-wide green energy commitment is real and growing among all cloud providers. However, when comparing the top three—Amazon Web Services (AWS), Azure and Google, AWS appears to be emerging as an IT sustainability leader; 41% of respondents perceived AWS as doing the most to address green initiatives.

AWS is on track to power its entire operations with 100% renewable energy by 2025. With their solar plant investment in April 2021, Amazon became the largest corporate buyer of renewable energy in Europe. Around the globe, AWS has invested in a combination of on-site solar, solar farms and wind farms to power their data centers and Whole Foods divisions.

To their credit, both Microsoft and Google also committed to climate pledges that affect their cloud footprint. Azure supports a similar initiative to reach 100% renewable energy by 2025, in addition to further investments to improve water, waste disposal and surrounding local ecosystems. Google Cloud’s commitment is to operate on carbon-free energy 24 hours a day by 2030, and the company has already achieved 100% renewable every year since 2017.

Not only does AWS appear to be doing the most to address its environmental impact, it also retains the most market traction as a cloud leader. The majority of respondents (62%) said that AWS is winning the cloud wars while only 31% said Azure and just 7% said GCP.

Final Thoughts

It is heartening to see that ESG standards are having a measurable impact on a company’s cloud allegiances. The market now demands real change and is willing to pay the price for more ethical and sustainable cloud hosting.

But choosing a cloud provider is only one aspect of reducing IT’s impact. As I’ve covered before, there are many ways IT can curb its climate impact. Such actions include optimizing overall infrastructure, shuttering zombie VMs, avoiding over-provisioning resources, increasing performance visibility, refactoring code and other measures. What’s great is that most of these initiatives have the added benefit of reducing cost to the business.

The CloudBolt Industry Insights Report, The Truth About IT Sustainability: Paying More Green to Get More Green, surveyed 256 IT leaders on their perception of cloud sustainability. For additional insights, you can pick up a copy here.

October 29, 2021
After the Turning Point

July 26, 2021
10 Actions IT Can Take to Curb Climate Impact

Digital technology is responsible for 3.7% of total CO emissions, according to estimates from The Shift Project. This could increase, as cryptocurrency mining is leaving a massive carbon footprint. With the world’s climate at stake, every percentage point matters.

Thankfully, many tech companies have announced significant climate pledges to reduce emissions or offset their carbon footprint. For example, Microsoft states they will be carbon neutral by 2030. Amazon has committed to a deadline of 2040, and other companies such as Infosys have co-signed. Netflix’s climate commitment states they will reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by the end of 2022.

Sustainability goals are vital long-term benchmarks, but on-the-ground technologists must make immediate optimizations to realize them. So, what exact steps can enterprise IT take to reduce their energy consumption and thereby reduce greenhouse gas emissions?

I recently met with Anant Adya, Infosys, to explore the overall energy footprint of enterprise technology. Below, I’ll cover 10 ways IT can reduce its impact on the environment, including actions like auditing legacy infrastructure, optimizing cloud operations and moving toward renewable energy sources. Many of these energy optimizations bring the added benefits of cost savings and code consolidation.

1. Reduce Resource-Heavy Legacy Infrastructure

One potential cause of unnecessary energy consumption is legacy infrastructure. To reduce power consumption, Adya recommends going straight to a network compute storage setup. You may find energy consumption savings by porting resource-heavy legacy systems to the cloud. This will be especially effective if you’re running older end-of-life machines with less efficient processing.

2. Reduce the Number of Clouds

Next, look at the number of clouds your organization has adopted, Adya recommended. In recent years, companies have moved to multi-cloud setups for reasons like performance, cost or features. However, these movements could cause unnecessary duplication. For a large enterprise, refactoring your multi-cloud usage could mean reducing from five or six clouds to two or three, said Adya. With the right combination, you could very likely reach equivalent benefits with less reliance on multiple clouds.

3. Reduce the Number of Core Data Centers

Look at the number of sites in your core data centers and reduce the footprint, if possible. In his digital transformation work, Adya described working with a client to consolidate six large data centers into three essential locations — one for disaster recovery and two others to support American and European zones.

4. Move Edge Locations to the Cloud

Large organizations may be supporting a lot of edge infrastructure. Yet some locations, such as offices, don’t require that kind of infrastructure, Adya suggested. He recommended reducing local servers and embracing more cloud-based computing solutions, overall. He described one case in which an organization consolidated 600 edge sites to 350, thus reducing power consumption by 40%. Adya credited the cloud for delivering lower costs and greater scalability and resiliency.

5. Embrace Cloud-Native Administrative Operations

Cloud computing is arguably more energy efficient than traditional on-premises arrangements with its pay-per-use model and multi-tenant approach. To get the most out of the cloud, Adya recommended moving to the cloud, along with adopting cloud-native software. Most operational and administrative work can be processed in the cloud, he noted.

6. Consolidate and Rationalize Resource Utilization

Another way to stem energy consumption is to check for underused or forgotten assets. While the cloud can help optimize software, there is a good deal of unnecessary cloud spending on underused resources. In 2020, companies wasted $17.6 billion paying for idle resources and overprovisioned computing instances, reported ParkMyCloud. Adya thus recommended looking at the entire server and storage estate to calculate the server utilization and slimming down wherever possible.

7. Increase Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE)

Hardware is much more efficient these days — sometimes by as much as 10X more powerful with 10X less energy consumed. As storage technologies also are always improving, it could make sense to upgrade to new hardware to reduce overall power usage. It’s important to monitor power usage effectiveness (PUE) and check power ratings before and after migrations. Adapting your information life cycle management tiering practices for storage could also help optimize to reduce wasted power, Adya added.

8. Meet Sustainability Goals on Campus

Have you ever driven by an office park at night and seen thousands of empty rooms with all the lights on? This has got to change. Another way to reduce power is to limit a campus’s energy consumption, described Adya. Smart automation and remote monitoring could be used to manage power efficiency by turning off lights and heating and cooling to meeting rooms when empty, for example.

9. Power the Business With Renewable Energy

Run your campus with solar power. Adya described how Infosys is doing this by mounting 40MW solar panels at their corporate centers, in effect sourcing 43% of its energy from renewable sources. Another more passive way to invest in renewables is to choose a data center provider that commits, under contract, to using a high percentage of renewable energy.

10. Purchase Carbon Offsets

The previous goals are all active steps to reduce energy requirements. However, once an organization has attempted these optimizations, another option is carbon offsetting. This indirect method effectively cancels out a company’s emissions by funding green activities, such as tree planting.

However, there is debate over the effectiveness of carbon offsetting, as trees take decades to become effective carbon consumers, and the practice doesn’t advocate for immediate change to harmful practices. “To be serious about tackling climate change, [organizations] need to stop carbon emissions from getting into the atmosphere in the first place,” wrote Alia al Ghussan for Greenpeace.

IT’s Role In Curbing Climate Change

Dire climate circumstances require quick action from all business units. In the process, organizations will likely consider many initiatives simultaneously to address their climate impact. However, as more companies become digital-first businesses, the onus falls on IT to support these changes.

In addition to the above actions, there are undoubtedly other ways enterprise software architects can stimulate sustainability initiatives within their organization. This could include refactoring code into more lean iterations or eliminating unnecessary records storage. Tech leaders could also vocalize their support for global pledges, such as the Paris Climate Agreement, RE100 or Global Optimism.

It would take a solar power plant covering 115,625 square miles, roughly the size of New Mexico, to power the world with solar energy! As you can see, it will take a lot of work to reverse our reliance on fossil fuels. But with scalable cloud computing and more intelligent infrastructure optimizations, IT can do its part to contribute to curbing climate change.

June 1, 2021