Environment Variables

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:
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Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Chris Skipper hosts Florent Morel and Joseph Cook to discuss Carmen on this Backstage episode. Built at Amadeus and now part of the GSF ecosystem, Carmen helps organizations measure software carbon emissions at both infrastructure and application levels using existing observability and FinOps data, all powered by the GSF Impact Framework. They discuss why granular, team-level emissions data matters, how Carmen works in practice, and how standardized, transparent measurements can turn sustainability insights into concrete engineering action.

Learn more about our people:
Chris Skipper: LinkedIn | Website
Florent Morel: LinkedIn | GitHub | Website
Joseph Cook: LinkedIn | Website

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

Resources:
Open‑Source Carbon Measurement Engine: How Carmen Advances Sustainable Engineering | Amadeus [00:30]
How Amadeus engineers are contributing to a carbon-aware software industry? | Amadeus [03:08]
Impact Framework | GSF [05:30]
Environment Variables Ep 96 | Backstage: Impact Framework [07:48]
Software Carbon Intensity (SCI) Specification | GSF [17:13]
GitHub - AmadeusITGroup/carmen: Open-source carbon measurement for cloud infrastructure and Kubernetes workloads. [20:48]

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.

Anne Currie hosts Anna Forlati to discuss why sustainability is not a cost center but a business advantage. Drawing on her journey from UX designer to Head of Digital Sustainability and Impact, Anna explores how inclusive design, ESG strategy, and cultural change can make digital products more resilient, ethical, and profitable. From B Corps and EU regulation to GreenOps and AI efficiency, the conversation reframes sustainability as a mindset shift that aligns purpose, performance, and long term value.

Learn more about our people:
Anne Currie: LinkedIn | Website
Anna Forlati: LinkedIn | Website

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

Resources:
Why inclusive products are green products - TetraLogical [11:57]
Green AI: Hype or Hope? | Harvard Magazine
GenAI Ecosystems Are Software, Not Magic: What It Takes to Build Something You Can Live With | by Wilco Burggraaf | Medium

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.

In this episode, host Chris Adams is joined by Wilco Burggraaf and Robert Keus of GreenPT to unpack what greener prompting and transparent AI actually look like in practice. They discuss why most AI services hide their environmental impact, how GreenPT exposes real energy and carbon data to users, and why user behavior plays a major role in AI’s footprint. The conversation explores prompt length, session design, model efficiency, and the limits of chat-based AI, making a strong case for transparency, better defaults, and more purposeful use of AI if it’s going to scale responsibly.

Learn more about our people:
Chris Adams: LinkedIn | GitHub | Website
Robert Keus: LinkedIn | Website
Wilco Burggraaf: LinkedIn | Medium | Website

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

Resources:
GreenPT [01:14]
Green Software - The Netherlands | Meetup [02:34]
Scaleway [22:40]
Neuralwatt [29:23]

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.

Chris Adams speaks with Tom Kerkhove of the Microsoft Azure API Management team about how thoughtful API design can reduce energy use and improve system efficiency. They discuss how API gateways, caching, throttling, and observability can cut unnecessary compute and data transfer, while also improving reliability and developer experience. The conversation shows how small architectural decisions at the API layer can have an outsized impact on cost, performance, and sustainability at scale.

Learn more about our people:
Chris Adams: LinkedIn | GitHub | Website
Tom Kerkhove: LinkedIn | Website

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

Resources:
Solar Protocol [02:33]
KEDA [04:37]
Azure API Management [10:01]
Grid-aware websites - Green Web Foundation [20:37]
Electricity Maps [23:25]
Real Time Energy and Carbon Standard for Cloud Providers [26:17]
Azure API Management | Microsoft Azure Blog [30:01]

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.