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RIPE NCC Project day:�A carbon aware internet

Chris Adams, The Green Web Foundation

@mrchrisadams

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Hi!�I’m Chris.

Executive director, The Green Web Foundation

Organiser, ClimateAction.tech

Co-Editor, Branch Magazine

Chair, Green Software Foundation Policy Working Group

RIPE 84 - @mrchrisadams

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What we’ll cover together…

  1. Why we did this
  2. What we’ve done so far
  3. What we’re doing next

RIPE 84 - @mrchrisadams

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We are in a climate crisis largely because we keep burning fossil fuels, instead of finding a path off them

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Why we need a fossil free internet

Save carbon - climate emergency, remember?

Save lives - 5m+ avoidable deaths / year from poor air quality globally, primarily from burning fossil fuels

Save money - fossil fuels are expensive with volatile prices

Improve retention among staff - ppl 💚 greener firms

Energy security - geopolitics and local resiliency

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What we wanted to do

  • Find / create / publish CO2 open intensity data
  • Build OSS to expose useful API and patterns
  • Integrate it into existing projects

RIPE 84 - @mrchrisadams

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Google’s new cloud region picker (link)

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We are using Ember climate’s open data, and adapting it for the internet (link)

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Moving code through space Moving code through time

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Moving code through space

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GET api/v3/ip-to-co2intensity/85.17.184.227

Extending our APIs for IP to carbon features (link)

if we can annotate IP data with open carbon intensity data…

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GET api/v3/ip-to-co2intensity/85.17.184.227

{

"checked_ip": "85.17.184.227",

"country_name": "Netherlands",

"country_code_iso_2": "NL",

"country_code_iso_3": "NLD",

"carbon_intensity_type": "avg",

"carbon_intensity_grams_per_kwh": 388.186,

"generation_from_fossil": 69.84%,

"year": 2021,

}

…then we can optimise the internet for carbon too, and build new services

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developers.thegreenwebfoundation.org (link)

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building carbon awareness into computing schedulers to automatically find the greenest compute (link)

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Moving code through time

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Annual figures vs hourly figures

Charts from Bo Tranberg, Entolabs (link)

“An average of ~30 % per year does not mean wind turbines are constantly producing at 30 % capacity every hour of the year.”

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Carbon aware datacentres

Scheduling work to use greener, cheaper energy

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How Google move compute loads through time to when energy is cheap and green (link)

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building carbon awareness into computing schedulers to move code through time (link)

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the price of energy is increasingly linked to renewable generation and availability of transmission (link)

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Carbon aware websites

Shifting work through time to use greener energy

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Mostly renewables on the grid:�serve full set of rich images and media elements

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Lots of fossil fuels on the grid:�scale back design elements to stay inside carbon budget

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Carbon aware computers

Scheduling work to use greener, cheaper energy

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Carbon aware software updates with Windows (link)

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Building carbon awareness into the linux operating system with KDE (link)

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Carbon aware routing

Choosing the greenest routes for sending data

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See the RIPE 84 talk (link)

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simulated CO2 savings from using SCION, a suite of path aware networking techologies (link)

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What we want to do next

  • Finish docs site
  • Extend IP-to-carbon API, improve data
  • Finish integrations on existing projects to demonstrate ideas
  • Find new network projects

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The code repos:

github.com/thegreenwebfoundation/grid-intensity-go

github.com/thegreenwebfoundation/co2.js

More on on fossil free and carbon aware internet

thegreenwebfoundation.org/ripe84/

Our developers site:

developers.thegreenwebfoundation.org

Thanks!

Online community for climate aware technologists - https://climateAction.tech