69 lines
9 KiB
Markdown
69 lines
9 KiB
Markdown
title: Redesign into Zero Carbon
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---
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pub_date: 2020-01-26
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---
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author: ungleich
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---
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twitter_handle: ungleich
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---
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_hidden: no
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---
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_discoverable: no
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---
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abstract:
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We need to redesign ourself into zero carbon
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---
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body:
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## Reality check: it's been warm and it's not right
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In our small mountain village in the Swiss Alps, we’ve been having an exceptionally warm winter. Max. 11°C in January, is still cold enough for our servers but some of the local businesses are suffering from not having enough visitors to the region, since people usually come here to enjoy skiing and other winter sports that require snow and colder weather.
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While one strangely warm and snowless winter is not direct evidence of climate change, we can’t help but wonder what will happen if this continues every year: are we in the middle of watching something that is going away for good?
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It seems indeed so. In the Swiss Alps one of the things we see going away every year is the glacier - the Pizol glacier in the Glarus Alps, just around the corner for us, has been melting with an unprecedented speed and it is [due to disappear completely by 2030.](https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/reuters/climate-activists-hold-event-to-mark-vanishing-swiss-glacier/45247240) And it is just one of the many glaciers we are hopelessly watching while it melts away.
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When things turn too warm and no ice left to lock the cool temperature within, what will happen to our mountain ecosystem and to us people? It will certainly look different from today, and not in a good way. No snow on the Alps and having most parts of southern Europe turning into deserts is what environmental scientists are forecasting with gravitas. UK Met Office researchers warn that [by 2060, the world could warm up by 4 °C](https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19778-royal-society-paints-picture-of-a-world-4-c-warmer/) which will likely cause a serious food and water shortage for the world: animals and plants will face existential threat and so will people.
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## Every fraction of degree matters, and that requires our action.
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It is important to note that we are living a critical time. Last Tuesday at the World Economic Forum Davos, the young environmenal activist [Greta Thunberg told the world](https://youtu.be/rJ8Q_1r9L8U) that we have less than 8 years to stop the temperature raising from more than 1.5°C, and for that "every fraction of degree matters." Every effort we do to reduce carbon emission matters and those of us who can, we need to do this in scale and with speed. Especially the ones residing in better-off countries need to get down to zero emission much faster than now - and in fact we could, when we really mean to. When every fraction of degree matters we need to look at every aspect of our daily life with attention. Not only the surface, but behind the curtains and beneath the covers.
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## The physical reality of our digital world
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This is often very well hidden to all of us: that everything we do online actually has carbon footprint. We just don't see it so we tend to go on without really thinking about it, but we are still responsible for everything we do - searching, clicking, downloading, uploading, transferring, streaming. Because although not so apparent on the digital surface, every data exists somewhere as physical infrastructure that runs 24/7 with power generated by some source.
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But then how much carbon emission? Quite some in fact. Let's see some very easy examples, [10 minutes of YouTube equals 1g of CO2e,](https://www.creditangel.co.uk/blog/consumption-and-carbon-footprint-of-the-internet) [30 minutes of Netflix equals 1.6 kg(!) of CO2,](https://www.news18.com/news/buzz/half-an-hour-of-netflix-and-chill-emits-the-same-amount-of-co2-as-6-km-drive-2364791.html) and the list goes on and on.
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## How to reduce your digital CO2 emission
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Then the question comes down to how do we reduce, or avoid the CO2 emission from our digital world. A very good practice you can do easily is slimming down your digital acitivity. It's also *healthier* for most of us to get away from the screen once in a while. Pick up a book from your local library instead of that bad movie you downloaded from torrent. And of course walk or bike to that library if you can. Problem solved.
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No, problem not solved. Most of us do this digital thing for a living. We need to use data and some of us are actually saving the world by doing what we do. Many of us are in fact on the good side in fighting the evil (and/or) stupid side. Then what?
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Then what you need to do is going renewable for your digital data. Go with clean energy as much as you can, as fast you can.
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## How do I know how my digital world is powered?
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Maybe your digital service provider such as your chat app or photo cloud, is run by clean energy. Or likely they are not. This picture gives you an overview of what the energy sources are per country in Europe - and remember, Europe is on the better side of the world in terms of energy sources. But even in Europe you can see most countries still use unsustainable energy sources.
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Most people don't really know or care where their data is physically at. We kind of know what's bad with fast fashion or disposable plastics - that they are easy to use but destroys our environment and creates too much carbon emission - and the same logic applies to our digital data. We need to think about the easy options out there are in fact very bad for the environment, say the messanger or the community chat everybody around you uses, or the cloud that just comes with your device by default. In the meantime the [IT service industry grew as big as aviation industry in terms of carbon emission](https://time.com/46777/your-data-is-dirty-the-carbon-price-of-cloud-computing/) and now it takes about 2% of total global carbon emissions. So it is really about time we start to feel towards and act responsible with our digital choices.
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You can start by finding out where your data physically is, and what kind of energy the infrastructure uses. Most of the times it's not that hard to find out, and if it's hidden, you need to request the information to be disclosed to your provider. Where are they keeping their servers, and what is the energy source they are using? Are they running servers with coal or other fossil fuels? Or nuclear power? O renewable energy such as water, solar or windpower?
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## Zero Carbon VS. Carbon Offset
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This should be an obvious point, but it's not always so obvious for most of us. Zero carbon emission from the energy source (meaning produced by 100% renewable source such as water or solarpower) is a better choice than carbon offsetting. Carbon offsetting, roughly translates into using whatever energy source available (say coal or nuclear) and paying money for funding projects for reducing the CO2 already added to the air. Carbon offsetting is a solution with its own goals and values, but it is not an answer for our critical environmental situation especially if we have zero carbon as an option. Imagine, when a glass is full, not adding any drop to it would be the best approach if we do not want to overflow the glass.
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## How to go Zero Carbon?
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To reduce carbon emission from the cloud there are two ways to do it. One is find the ones who are doing zero carbon already, and move your data there and support them so the renewable energy can be the norm. This will also encourage the new players coming into the cloud market to start clean as zero carbon. Two is pushing your cloud provider to change how they are running their servers and go fully renewable. This will help forcing the bigger players in the industry to change.
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But for those who are capable, we want to say that go for the first option. It is for the same reason as the zero carbon vs. carbon offset. When there are those who already doing the right things, go with them now, instead of continuing with those who promise to reach their goal in coming decades.
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## Our Story of Building Zero Carbon Cloud Infrastructure
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In some regions of the world, going zero carbon is much easier than other parts. Take our case in Switzerland for example, we have electricity generated by hydropower from the Alps. We have in-house hydropower generators few meters away from our servers, built from the time when Swiss textile industry made most jeans of the world. The textile industry all left to other countries with cheaper labour cost, leaving vast, empty factories behind perfect for sitting servers inside. This is how we started our datacenter, with things already built from the past, reusing hardware and reusing infrastructure, and running things only with renewable energy.
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We offer Zero Carbon options to people who are looking for ways to really reduce their daily digital carbon footprint. For example Zero Carbon Cloud is a monthly cloud storage plan that is a sustainable alternative to Google Cloud (which plans to reduce their CO2 emission by ....) or Dropbox (Which hosts with AWS).
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Zero Carbon Chat is a chat app that can replace Slack
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