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@ -52,12 +52,12 @@ Then what you need to do is going renewable for your digital data. Go with clean
## How is my digital world is powered?
Maybe your digital service provider such as your chat app or photo cloud, is already run by clean energy. But 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 depend on non-renewable energy sources.
Maybe your digital service provider such as your chat app or photo cloud, is already run by clean energy. But likely they are not. The picture below 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 depend on non-renewable energy sources.
![](/u/image/energy-source-by-country.jpg)
We already know that fast fashion and disposable plastics are bad - that they are easy to use but destroys our environment and creates too much carbon emission in its lifecycle - and the same logic applies to our digital data. We need to acknowledge that the widely available digital services are in fact bad for the environment, say the messanger or the chat everybody around you uses, or the cloud that just comes with your device by default. As a matter of fact 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 act responsible for our digital choices.
The first step for reducing your digital carbon footprint is finding out where your data physically is to know what kind of energy the infrastructure uses. If the information is hidden, you need to request your provider to disclose it. Where are they keeping their servers, and what is the energy source they are using? Are they running servers with coal, oil or other fossil fuels? Or is your digital service run by nuclear power?
The first step for reducing your digital carbon footprint is finding out where your data physically is to know what kind of energy the infrastructure uses. If the information is hidden, you need to request your provider to disclose it. Where are they keeping their servers, and what is the energy source they are using? Are they [running servers with coal, oil or other fossil fuels?](https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/09/23/informations-environmental-cost/clean-it-means-clean-energy-suppliers-too) Or is your digital service run by nuclear power?
## Zero Carbon VS. Carbon Offset
@ -66,7 +66,7 @@ The short answer is no. Imagine, when a glass is full, not adding any drop to it
## Use the small and renewable digital services
There are two ways to reduce carbon footprint from our digital data. One is finding the ones who are running by zero carbon already, and supporting them by using those instead of others. This means your digital life is only enabled by clean energy, and you will have zero carbon emission in terms of energy used for running your services. By supporting zero carbon standard you encourage the new service providers coming into the market to start clean with renewable energy.
There are two ways to reduce carbon footprint from our digital data. One is finding [the ones who are running by zero carbon already,](https://github.com/vrde/notes/tree/master/zero-carbon) and supporting them by using those instead of others. This means your digital life will be only enabled by clean energy, and you will have zero carbon emission in terms of energy used for running your services. By supporting zero carbon standard you encourage the new service providers coming into the market to start clean with renewable energy.
The second way is pushing your current service provider to change how they are running their servers, to go fully renewable. The advantage of this will be that the change will affect a bigger number of people, when really done. The disadvantage of it is that bigger companies take much more time in changing their huge infrastructure, while even more CO2 will be emitted from them into the air.
We want to stress that, for those who care and who are capable, 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 plan to reach their goal in coming decades.](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-20/amazon-s-emissions-bigger-than-some-rivals-trail-walmart)
@ -75,6 +75,9 @@ We want to stress that, for those who care and who are capable, go for the first
So how does the small and renewable zero carbon digital services look like in reality? We can take us as one of the examples.
In this small Alpine village we are located at, we are running [servers with only renewable energy.](https://datacenterlight.ch/en-us/cms/hydropower/) That is 99.9% hydropower and 0.1% solar power. Our case is a bit special because we brought our servers into old buildings that used to work as spinning and weaving factories that are built many years ago when Switzerland hosted a strong textile industry. Now the textile industry all moved out of the country looking for lower labour cost, leaving vast empty industrial buildings. Thanks to the infrastructure previously built, we directly produce the hydroelectricity few meters away from our servers, by the water melted from glacier on the Alps.
What we do is we only use recycled servers, so we can extend their lifecycle as long as possible before they end up in the landfill. And we do not waste energy for cooling the servers: the mountain temperature is cool enough throughout the year, and the big space we have helps the servers from being overheated.
![](/u/image/zerocarbon-no.jpg)
On top of this fully renewable and recycled infrastructure runs the digital services such as cloud storage, [Zero Carbon Cloud](https://ungleich.ch/u/products/zero-carbon-cloud/) and team chat, [Zero Carbon Chat.](https://ungleich.ch/u/products/zero-carbon-chat/) These are cutting-edge applications that are developed by the fantastic open source community (Nextcloud and Mattermost, respectively), and we make it as a rule that only the services used and tested extensively by our team internally are offered to external customers. Digital services for everyday use such as Dropbox, Google photos, iCloud, Slack, Whatsapp can be easily replaced by its Zero Carbon alternatives.
## There are more Zero Carbon to come