Contents

Overview
Some links and reading
Workshop scenarios
Work-in-progress report

Overview

https://network23.org/theb/computing-and-environment/
brentc@riseup.net

This is an ongoing study of environmental issues around computing. It starts with theoretical background, with an aim towards practice and application. While clearly large-scale change is paramount, this focus is at a ‘mid’ level, such as a small organisation or group. Some individual and local actions are drafted in Appendix: General advice in the work-in-progress report linked below.

Starting premises need to be worked out. Firstly, the understanding that digital computing has a very material basis can be acknowledged. Further, with a holistic, socio-technical view of technology, the possibility of a simple technofix can be rejected. The problem of greenwashing and criticisms of compensatory measures such as offsetting should be noted. There are ‘climate justice’ problems- the rich pollute more while the poor suffer disproportionately. In the terms of targets, it can be argued that stronger ‘net zero’ and beyond goals that call for real reduction and broad application are necessary. These premises are subject to debate, but with good evidence, so a call to challenge views.

It is useful to determine some terminology. Emissions are typically expressed as ‘carbon equivalent’ emissions (CO₂e), and divided into ‘scopes’. Scope 1 refers to direct organisation emissions, such as in manufacturing, while Scopes 2 and 3 include emissions in the wider value chain of suppliers and customers. For many modern organisations (such as a digital agency), their major emissions are in the Scope 3 region. Impacts can be categorised as ‘first order’, concerning hardware lifecycles, ‘second order’, relating to use of ICT, and ‘third-order’ wider effects, which include ‘rebound effects’, where efficiency gains are counteracted by increased consumption.

Taking a view as a provider of computing services, environmental concerns can be analysed in terms of hardware, hosting and software. 

The ‘embodied carbon’ in hardware production, shipping and disposal greatly overshadows the impact of its use. The extraction of raw materials and ‘rare earth metals’ for hardware is particularly problematic. These are also major social justice and colonial issues around the extraction, manufacture and disposal of hardware. A key action here is to extend the lifetime use of computing equipment to avoid new procurement. 

Hosting, including data centres and ‘cloud computing’, have significant material environmental impacts, for example requiring hardware, power, air conditioning and resources such as water for cooling. Key actions are to use ‘greener’ services, while being wary of greenwashing, but most importantly to reduce usage. 

While hardware and hosting are major factors, it is necessary to consider software as a driver of hardware and hosting requirements. Software design and implementation need to be optimised for sustainability. Some points are in Appendix: Software and systems considerations. Sustainable ‘design patterns’ may be useful. 

Therefore a key action is to reduce usage across hardware, hosting and software. 

There are complications. As a basic example, while a desktop computer uses more energy than a laptop, laptops have a lower lifespan and need replacing more often. ‘Thin’ computing using cloud services may reduce the impact of personal computing devices, but shifts the impact to data centres. 

There can also be conflicting considerations- environmental measures may need to be balanced against requirements such as maintenance, performance and security, and wider social issues such as digital divides and inequalities should be considered.

There are emerging standards and guidance. These range from strategic to implementation and assessment, with various tools available, for example to assess website sustainability. See: Standards, guidance and tools in the report. 

For further development, strategic and policy work would be best done in collaboration with existing initiatives, such as the W3C Sustainable Web Design Community Group or Mozilla Projects/Sustainability/Research. Providers of web services and applications should develop sustainability assessments for their products, and provide low-impact solutions. Critical and alternative perspectives, such as permacomputing, computingwithinlimits.org or Trans*Feminist Counter Cloud Action Plan and others may be inspiring.

Some links and reading

• Greenwood, T. and ChatGPT (2023). An interview with AI on the social and environmental impacts of AI. Available at: https://www.wholegraindigital.com/blog/social-environmental-impacts-of-ai/ 
• Monserrate, S. G. (2022) ‘The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage’, MIT Case Studies in Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing, Winter 2022. Available at: https://mit-serc.pubpub.org/pub/the-cloud-is-material/release/1 
• Reading group: Environment and tech – https://docs.google.com/document/d/1o_9jqN-xMXvFTleVXbWoib5D7HTSA1cHmBd0lIvG8NE/edit#heading=h.row59kb9mtuz  
• See also: Systems thinking.

Workshop scenarios

Happy hosting A medium sized charity is launching a large campaign and need a flashy website. So far, their web needs have been served by a small IT department and a server room in their building. They are on a green tariff with their electricity supplier. The IT team would like to host the new campaign website with the market-leading ACME Cloud. ACME Cloud has a sustainability pledge to be net zero by 2025, accompanied with videos of idyllic Scandinavian countryside. The charity’s Ethics Consultant, however, has a contact at Autonomous Hosting in the next town. Autonomous Hosting is a small operation that started last month. They state they only use solar power for their hosting, but there are limits on website storage and traffic.  There’s a meeting with the CEO, CTO, Head of Sales, Ethics Consultant, IT staff, several Marketing and Communications managers, and the office dog. Which hosting option do they choose?

The great computer debate A successful digital co-op has been providing laptops for their workers. These are from Big Fruit Co, and seem to work well for the technical and graphical work they do. They do, however, need to be replaced fairly often when the model doesn’t get support or security updates for the proprietary operating system from Big Fruit Co anymore.  The co-op tries to be progressive, and recently created a Sustainability Team. This team has had a few meetings and concluded that the computers from Big Fruit Co are not environmentally friendly. There are also concerns about the Big Fruit Co’s social responsibility practices.They are proposing that the co-op moves to using the open-source Nixxy operating system. Their plan is to have a rolling replacement for the work computers with computers from Third Age Machines, who provide cheap, refurbished old computers, including desktops and laptops of various makes. These should be able to run the Nixxy operating system which gets free updates.  A lot of the workers really like the Big Fruit Co computers and have never used anything else, so this idea has provoked controversy. The IT support staff have also not expressed enthusiasm. It’s all kicking off at the co-op’s Away Day… what idea emerges as the best?

AI solves the climate crisis The government has made some high profile announcements recognising the climate crisis. This follows public outcry over huge increases in claims from MPs for air conditioning costs in their second homes. The government has come up with a plan for a solution. They understand that the climate crisis is a big problem that will therefore require advanced technology to solve. The plan is to build a world-leading Super Artificial Intelligence Machine Learning Big Data System. This will be distributed and run on computers all over the world, using their processing power and storage. It will also take advantage of large cloud platforms, and possibly data centres built on the moon. This will gather all relevant data, autonomously learn and train itself, and finally provide a solution for the problem.  The government has convened a conference to gather all technologists to realise this plan. This includes big tech companies such as Big A, Big G and Big Blue, any digital company that could afford to attend, academics, futurists, and thousands of tech start-ups and entrepreneurs. The government has even sponsored some groups it usually doesn’t like, such as Hotshot Hacktivists Anonymous. Refreshments are provided, and there will be an afterparty with DJs.  There is also opposition. The Spoon Whittlers have posted a strongly worded letter. The group Love Cats Hate Tech are making threatening posts on social media, and there’s a motley crowd outside waving placards at the security staff. How does it all work out?

Work-in-progress report