Tag: energy
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Things you forget to ask when doing a podcast about AI power spikes and hardware standards
I’m sharing this here to come back to later, as I host a podcast called Environment Variables and I recently did an interview with some folks who are working on getting a standards group off the ground focussed on how datacentre hardware and software work together. There was one claim that during the interview I didn’t…
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Is the problem just GenAI?
I’m trying to make sense of some of the figures shared when we talk about the environmental impact of AI, and what the specific drivers of it are, in terms of the specific kinds of AI being deployed around the world. Here are some notes, and a request for help to point somekind of useful…
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On conflating different kinds of AI in the climate context
I’ve found myself looking for this quote 3 times this month, and LinkedIn is a real pain to use to find it, so I’m posting it here. This quote from David Rolnick, one of the founders of the non-profit Climate Change AI is a useful one to have handy, because its coming from someone with…
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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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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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Hydrogen datacentres – is this legit?
Part of my job at work is to stay up to date about the options for decarbonisation of the digital sector. I listened to a podcast yestersday where there were a load of claims that seemed well.. too good to be true, even with my developing knowledge of the sector. I’ll outline them below, because…
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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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Useful resources for developers interested in solar
A friend of mine, Carlton Gibson recently asked me for some links, people to follow, and leads in general to look up for a developers taking a new interest in solar technology. @mrchrisadams hiya — happy new year! Can I ask, if I asked if you had any good leads on accounts/blogs to follow on…