For the last two years, Chris at the Green Web Foundation has been recording the podcast “Environment Variables” with the Green Software Foundation, providing in-depth interviews and analysis. Read on to learn about the podcast and the latest episode, AI’s Power Problem.
What is Environment Variables?
Waaaaaaaay back in 2020, Environment Variables was an idea for a podcast, jointly cooked up by Asim Hussain (at the time, Microsoft’s Green Cloud Advocacy Lead), and Chris Adams, (who had recently become a co-director of the Green Web Foundation) as a way to help grow a field that today we might refer to as Sustainable Software Engineering. You can see the initial show idea on Listennotes.
In 2022, the podcast was reborn as a project inside a newly created industry body, the Green Software Foundation, as a project with largely the same goals – to provide interviews, commentary and analysis about this developing practice. After more than 70 episodes over the last two years, Environment Variables is now in the top 10 percent of podcasts globally, with around 10-12,000 downloads each month. You can see the listennotes page for the rebooted podcast, but it’s now also accessible at podcast.greensoftware.foundation.
Better late than never – mentioning the podcast here too
Even though each episode represents hours of research and preparation, we never got round to mentioning the podcast on the Green Web Foundation website – so if you didn’t already know about the podcast, you would have no idea that we’ve been putting this time into it for all these years.
Oops.
Still. It’s never too late to start telling people about it, right?
A new Environment Variables episode: AI’s Power Problem
There is a new environment variables episode out featuring Asim and Chris, covering:
- how to make sense of the news stories about power demand for AI
- using fungi to manage building waste in data centers, and the role circular materials can play in digital infrastructure
- how to change the carbon footprint of a program without changing the code
- and much more
Visit the dedicated episode page with shownotes and transcript.
