Green IO Paris Conference 2024

Hello responsible technologist!

Let’s take a moment to welcome the 581 new readers from the Green IO Paris conference. In case of mistake / no time / 2nd thought / etc. please unsubscribe here! And no hard feelings. 🙂

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The 2025 edition of Green IO Paris was packed with great speakers and panelists with still room for a nice surprise: I had the pleasure to celebrate the 50th episode of the podcast on stage with many previous guests thanks to the amazing MC and volunteers who set up the happening (many thanks! 🙏).

Now let’s jump to the main takeaways of the conference. I will go straight to the point because all the presentations are now available on the Green IO Paris website and you can also check the conference booklet for an overview.

✨ AIe AIe AIe*

*In French in the original version
(“Aïe” means “Ouch” in French 😉 )

Nothing new since months about the trend: AI seems to drive enormous increases in energy consumption not to mention other negative environmental impacts. Deborah Andrews shared data showing up to 50% of workloads could be AI by 2028 and Juliette Fropier warned about the many unknowns so far: future sizes of models, number of users, time spent by users with Gen AI, number of re-trainings, secondary effects from IA such as accelerated obsolescence, etc. Fortunately, the question of AI environmental footprint is not taboo in organizations anymore, as highlighted by Nathalie Charbonniaud and Samuel Rincé in the round table. And new tools might help, such as Code Carbon, presented by Marion Coutarel and Benoît Courty, which takes into account GPU specificities, and Electricity Maps (Marcus Garsdal and Pierre Segonne) new forecasting capacity to embrace true grid-aware computing when planning the training of models. 

📶 Being serious about network

Let’s face it, regular IT folks, such as yours truly, understand servers, OS, containers, apps, sometimes a bit of hardware and energy basics, yet we don’t really know how networks operate. It’s a different world following different physical and economic laws. Having Romain Jacob explain to us how “empty”  our optic cables are and other network capacities today because of pick provisioning was eye-opening. A single digit percent of capacity being used seems to be the norm: what a waste! There is such an opportunity to prioritize energy efficiency over increasing capacity and unquestioned usages. Especially knowing how big the streaming share is in both network and datacenter electricity demand: 70% according to Greening of Streaming 2022 figures explained by Dom Robinson. 

🖥️ Hardware is making a comeback

"It became apparent that the hard and software communities could collaborate more to accelerate sustainable and circular practices" stated Deborah Andrews on stage. Years of virtualization and “as a servicization” has made us lazy about the layer beneath, but we cannot overstate the importance of hardware in all aspects of IT. First, with end-user devices, and the Green IT Association’s latest global study on the environmental footprint of the digital sector highlights for instance a +100% impact in increase when switching from a 47 inches LCD screen to a 55 inches OLED. Second, within the data center sector, 85% of the environmental footprint of an average UK datacenter is due to IT equipment, with a much bigger share accounting from embodied carbon (almost 50/50) according to Cedaci project LCA (based on reverse engineering of 2017 servers) rather than the usual 80/20 found in many carbon audits. Thirdly, the connection with code has never been so strong. As illustrated by Aurélien Rougemont with an upgrade in firmware cutting by 8 the power consumption of fans during peak time. A talk which made me discover the importance of the open firmware movement. Eventually, Wilco Burggraaf’s illustration on how understanding CPU cycles - a core goes from 0% to 100% much faster that it slows down - helps green software practitioners to code better. 

🛠️ We are starting to have real Green IT use cases to share

“Undoable!”. We eventually have ammunition to counter the much listened pushback when we advocate for more sustainability in our Tech stack. Leboncoin ( Aude Février and Océane Staron) reducing 10% of its massive API traffic, Back Market (Antonin Mellier and Guillaume Mazollier) changing its cloud provider on sustainability grounds, Salesforce (Boris Gamazaychikov) using AI to optimize cloud deployment with an assessment of the environmental cost/benefit ratio, beta.gouv.fr (Anne Faubry) not doing a B2B app after an honest collection of user needs. Different scopes, different types of organizations, yet they all managed to move the needle in the right direction. The potential to leverage these examples is huge. And the ones pushed by participants in the Digital Sustainable Challenge will be excellent use cases next year. Of course, all these spearheaders still need help to better assess the environmental gains and make them more comparable. Good news is coming here as well, with Diane and James proving that a cloud provider can follow a recognized referential - the ADEME PCR - to assess the environmental footprint of its users, David Eckchajzer and Laetitia Bornes illustrating how a systemic model enables a better evaluation of avoided emissions, and Asim Hussain making the case for more comparable environmental claims thanks to the GSF impact framework.

✏️ Design: our ultimate responsibility to challenge what do we use Tech for  

In the talks focusing on eco-design, Marjolein Pilon explained how potent it is to use ‘Planet’ as a stakeholder in agile user story, Margerie Guillot and Raphaël Lemaire reminded us to design a simple solution that fit the needs, and Anne Faubry to display non-essential features on click (among many other tips). However, I was also struck how the design phase was being addressed in so many other talks: Deborah Andrews reminded us of its impact for data center circularity (up to 80% of product’s environmental impact are determined at the design phase), Frugal AI approaches were advocated by Juliette Fropier where sufficiency rather than simple efficiency was the focus, and how design influences the outcome of the systemic analysis, as provided by David Eckchajzer and Laetitia Bornes. Ultimately, as Lou Welgryn stated during the round table, the pivotal question is what is AI used for which Hannah Smith echoed in her closing talk raising the question of how to actually design a technological world where creativity takes precedence over manual skills, and where the traditional boundaries between work, study, and play seamlessly dissolve, creating an inclusive world where innovation and human potential flourish hand in hand.

🔭 What to expect at Green IO conferences in 2025?

Green IO Paris 2024 was the 4th iteration of a series which I started a year ago. I guess I am not a rookie anymore!😅 

Reflecting on this rollercoaster adventure, here is what worked well and what should be improved for the next five Green IO conferences in 2025. We will keep our focus on quality. Green IO speakers usually write nice things about joining Green IO, for sure we cuddle them, and about me, that’s more questionable 😅. Truth is that I can be a bit a pain in the a** with our speakers: discussing the topics, the angles, making sure they understand the audience, etc. This will remain non negotiable. Same with the connection with the academic world. This is my “Captain obvious” moment: bringing people on stage who’s job is to think and research all day long is … beneficial! So we will keep on chasing these rare pearls of academics having the ability to make their research understandable. Thirdly, we will keep on covering main topics (AI, design, software, cloud, …) from multiple international perspectives starting with hands-on use cases. It comes with its downside, not everyone being always comfortable switching from use-case to in-depth research but we expect people to take some breaks. During these breaks, they will be able to discover amazing communities thanks to our welcoming policy towards NGO in the Digital Sustainability area. And when financially and logistically possible, we will try to a bit of art as well to release the pressure of trying to save our Planet at each talk or at least our industry. 🙂 Last but not the least, expect our events to remain the place where you can refuel energy with Green IT peers (pun intended 😉). 

On the “could to do better” side, the Tast’IT apéro in Paris helped me see how creating networking opportunities for attendees is pivotal. We will work to have dedicated time for networking (such as afterwork) in all our conferences in 2025. Lastly, I am fully aware that many readers and listeners do not have the physical or financial possibilities to attend a conference. Making the content available online for them is a priority for 2025. 

One last thing, if you enjoy the Green IO conferences, consider the followings:

• Talk: CFP is now open for 2025, time to consider speaking?
• Volunteer: a unique opportunity to have fun and participate in an impactful experience (drop us an email at [email protected])
• Sponsor: help us find the sponsors who will secure the future of the Green IO Conferences (drop us an email at [email protected])

It’s now time to leave you with our usual news on IT Sustainability across the world. It’s our long summer break vacation in Reunion Island, so I am going to take some time off and … disconnect a bit!

See you on Tuesday January 28th for a new Green IO episode with Pablo José Gamez Cersosimo and Paz Pena about the latest UN Report “Shipping an Environmentally Sustainable and Inclusive Digitalization” and let’s catch up the week after for the January newsletter.

I wish you all a relaxing, meaningful and joyful time with your loved ones for the end of year celebrations. 🎄