Tag: climate
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Will new models like DeepSeek reduce the direct environmental footprint of AI?
I’m in a chat at work, and recently this question came up: Are folks expecting a reduction in energy demands if DeepSeek-style models become dominant vs the ones you see from Open AI? I’ve paraphrased it slightly, but it’s an interesting question, so rather than obnoxiously share a long answer into a that chat, I…
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Some notes from reading about the UK’s plan for clean power by 2030
For me at least, one of the most politically exciting things that happened this year was seeing the UK finally get rid of a conservative government and elect one that had to extremely ambitious climate promises in its manifesto. More specifically the goal to reach clean power by 2030 really caught my attention, and coincidentally…
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Why talk about monopoly in the context of climate change?
This came up in a recent conversation about sustainability in the digital sector, because the answer isn’t immediately obvious. To understand it, I think you need to understand why we have antitrust or competition laws in the first place. When they were first brought about bout in the first half of the 20th century, there…
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Does the EU AI Act really call for tracking inference as well as training in AI models?
I’m sharing this post as it I think it helped me realise something I hadn’t appreciated til today. I don’t build AI models, and to be honest, while I make sparing use of Github Co-pilot and Perplexity, I’m definitely not a power user. My interest in them is more linked to my day job, and…
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If you want greener energy, what’s the best way to get it?
I saw an interesting chart fly by recently from a tweet by Juliaen Jomaux, taken from the recent IEA Renewables report (page 57), What does this chart tell us? The key thing that attracted my attention was how in China, the use of fixed-tariffs / premiums, where anyone building a renewables project gets a fixed…
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Why we should be intentional about the mental models we use for thinking when we think about digital sustainability
To make sense of our world, we often form incomplete, yet still useful mental models of how it works. Most of the time these are helpful, but when we are dealing with complex systems, what might feel intuitively right, can lead to outcomes totally at odds with we were initially aiming to achieve. This post…
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How much power do hyperscalers use, and how much would it cost to go fossil-free 24 / 7 ?
I found out today that the Carbon Disclosure Project allows you to register and download their questionnaire responses. This means for companies that conveniently leave absolute energy usage figures out of their annual reporting, it’s possible to get an idea of what they might be – something I care about in the context of figuring…
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A new Californian law on offsets goes a long way to making them more transparent
This came up on one of my feeds recently. Emphasis is mine from the original text on the Californian legislation website detailing the bill: AB 1305, Gabriel. Voluntary carbon market disclosures. This bill would require a business entity that is marketing or selling voluntary carbon offsets, as defined, within the state to disclose on the…
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How to have a Net Zero target whilst causing as much carbon pollution as possible
I was on a call for Carbon Tracker webinar call about a coming report, and a the subject of the most damaging way to do Net Zero came up. One speaker mentioned a a scenario that really stuck with me – he outlined a way you lets you say you have a Net zero target…
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A provocative, but fascinating way to think about climate impact in a services or consulting business
In 2008, after graduating from university, I saw a talk by Ed Gillespie at the Hub (now the impact Hub) in Angel Islington, London. It really stayed with me, and one result of me coming to that lunchtime talk was that I met someone Jamie Andrews, who was working on an idea called Loco2, a…