How to decrease the environmental impact of your app AMEE FOWA 2008

1. How to decrease the environmental impact of your <foo>

2. The number of PCs
in use around the world
has exceeded 1 billion
and will double by 2014
Gartner

3. 180m “retired” ... 35m straight to landfill
recycling could save 11 tonnes of CO2 per tonne of PC waste

4. Be Sustainable
Or
Be Landfill
9 years left in the UK

5. *landfill

6. *landfill

7. Who's looking
after our
binary dust?

8. Isn't the web just
digital landfill?

9. "Why Don't You Just
Switch Off Your
Telecomputer Set
And Go Out And Do
Something Less Boring
Instead?"

10. Gavin Starks

11. Vision
Aggregate all the energy data on Earth
- all the environmental emissions factors
- all the methodologies and standards
- all the consumption data

12. Why
We need to reduce CO2 emissions by 80% - starting yesterday
To avoid mass-extinction events*
We could wait for “new tech” or “clean tech”
or “legislation” (and legislation is coming)
* yes, really

13. Ref: http://www.wattzon.org/

14. Ref: http://www.wattzon.org/

15. Ref: http://www.wattzon.org/

16. how much could we save NOW by just being better?

17. Server Footprint
1U dual-socket cluster node ~300 watts + aircon = 600W = 5000kwh
Per server: 2,500 kgCO2/annum (and costs £500 per annum)
CPUs : Xeon: 50 – 150W, AMD: 55 – 105W, Sunfire: 72W
Target should be: 1-10W (e.g 6-8W Linutop server)

18. Information Footprint
> 50% of organisations don't have decent email retention policies*
> 40% have no document classification policy*
“storage is cheap” - more please
clouds don't actually help here!
Targets: only store what we need.
Throw data away. Store on the least energy-intensive device
*source: EMC

19. Why are you building an app?
fun?
throwing sheep?
making money?
changing the world?
saving the Earth?

20. Good Things
don't build that thing – build that other thing that's more useful
switch it off, or get it to switch other things off
use virtual servers/ clouds (scale dynamically with load)
optimise, refactor, be smarter, be elegant, less brute force, monitor
slow cook computing

21. todo
write energy efficient code
watch Age of Stupid, Wall+E and Idiocracy
more function, less form

22. Yet Another Reason to
KILL ALL FLASH?

23. Good Things
change procurement cycles (watch Government)
“clean energy” data centres
“just in time” provisioning
low-level languages (machine code in the cloud?)

24. todo
make your app self-aware of its energy. disclose it.
make your app's users self-aware of the app's consumption
make your users self-aware of their own consumption

25. Good Things
tidy up
build bots that will
hoover up our
digital detritus 101101010101010101001

26. Good Things
make things that encourage less use
make things that encourage low-carbon/low-energy behaviour
encourage smarter movement (e.g. dopplr)
video conferencing – change habits
please could we have a better Webex? a more efficient Second Life?
(A Second Life citizen has the same foot print as the average Brazillian)

27. Good Things
give everything an energy identity
build “smart-grid” behaviour into everything
build what comes next
share it :: be disruptive :: rethink it from the ground up

28. examples

29. you
(home footprint)
AMEE enables
Building Power portability around
the user's data.
Assessor Company
AMEE is the neutral
“3rd place” that allows
data to be passed up,
Building Smart down, and across,
the supply chain.
Certificate Meter
AMEE anonymises
the data it holds
to maintain privacy.
Home Energy
Consumption
opt-in sharing

30. you
(travel footprint)
In this example, a GPS-
enabled mobile phone
Travel Service Mobile service can derive the mode of
(dopplr.com) (FireEagle) transport.
Using AMEE as the
trusted 3rd party, it could
Locative Mobile pass that information to
dopplr.com, a social
community phone network based around
travel.
Mode of
transport
opt-in sharing

31. Resolution
Make energy YOUR performance metric
Shut down power stations
Re-invent the (power) grid(s)
Reduce all travel
Measure and visualise all of it

32. Resolution
we don't just need change
we need systematic redesign
of the future

33. http://www.amee.cc
gavin@amee.cc

34. ps.
bring your own data: http://wiki.amee.cc
Thanks
http://www.flickr.com/photos/point_and_click/115258719/
apologies to http://www.napster.com
thanks to dopplr, Defra and you