Environment Variables Year Three Roundup

It’s been three years of Environment Variables! What a landmark year for the Green Software Foundation. From launching behind-the-scenes Backstage episodes, to covering the explosive impact of AI on software emissions, to broadening our audience through beginner-friendly conversations; this retrospective showcases our mission to create a trusted ecosystem for sustainable software. Here’s to many more years of EV!

Learn more about our people:

• Chris Adams: LinkedIn | GitHub | Website
• Anne Currie: LinkedIn
• Chris Skipper: LinkedIn
• Pindy Bhullar: LinkedIn
• Liya Mathew: LinkedIn
• Asim Hussain: LinkedIn
• Holly Cummins: LinkedIn
• Charles Tripp: LinkedIn
• Dawn Nafus: LinkedIn
• Max Schulze: LinkedIn
• Killian Daly: LinkedIn
• James Martin: LinkedIn

Find out more about the GSF:

• The Green Software Foundation Website 
• Sign up to the Green Software Foundation Newsletter

Resources:

• Backstage: TOSS Project (02:26)
• Backstage: Green Software Patterns (04:51)
• The Week in Green Software: Obscuring AI’s Real Carbon Output (07:41)
• The Week in Green Software: Sustainable AI Progress (09:51)
• AI Energy Measurement for Beginners (12:57)
• The Economics of AI (15:22)
• How to Tell When Energy Is Green with Killian Daly (17:47)
• How to Explain Software to Normal People with James Martin (20:29)
  
  

If you enjoyed this episode then please either:

• Follow, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts
• Follow and rate on Spotify
• Watch our videos on The Green Software Foundation YouTube Channel!
• Connect with us on Twitter, Github and LinkedIn!

TRANSCRIPT BELOW:
Chris Skipper: Welcome to Environment Variables from the Green Software Foundation. The podcast that brings you the latest in sustainable software development has now been running for three years.

So that's three years of the latest news in green software, talking about everything from AI energy through to the cloud, and its effect on our environment and how we as a software community can make things better for everybody else.

This past year Environment Variables has truly embodied the mission of the Green Software Foundation, and that's to create a trusted ecosystem of people, standards, tools, and best practices for creating and building green software. Now this episode's gonna feature some of the more key episodes that we did over the last year.

We're gonna be looking at a wide variety of topics and it's going to be hopefully a nice journey back through both the timeline of the podcast, but also the landscape of green software over the last year and how it has dramatically changed, not only due to the dramatic rise in use of AI amongst other things, but also just to the fantastic ideas that people have brought to the table in order to try and solve the problem of trying to decarbonize software. So without further ado, let's dive in to the first topic.



Chris Skipper: First, we brought about a new change in the way the podcast was structured. A new type of episode called Backstage.

Backstage is basically a behind the scenes look at the Green Software Foundation, internal projects and working groups. It's a space for our community to hear directly from project leaders to share the wins and their lessons learned and reinforce trust and transparency, which is one of the core tenets of the Green Software Foundation Manifesto.

Now, there were a bunch of great projects that were featured over the last year. We're gonna look at two specifically.

In our first backstage episode, we introduced the TOSS project. TOSS stands for Transforming Organizations for Sustainable Software, and it's led by the fantastic Pindy Bhullar. This project aims to embed sustainability into business strategy and operations through a four pillar framework.

. It's a perfect example of how the foundation operationalizes its mission to minimize emissions by supporting organizations on their sustainability journey.

Let's hear the snippet from Pendi explaining these four pillars.

Pindy Bhullar: Transforming organizations for sustainable software is the acronym for toss. Businesses will be able to utilize the toss framework as a guide to lay the groundwork for managing change and also improving software operations in the future, software practices within organizations can be integrated with sustainability in a cohesive and agile manner, rather than addressing green software practices in an isolated approach.

For a company to fully benefit from sustainable transformation of their software development processes, we need to review all aspects of technology. The Toss framework is designed to be embedded across multiple aspects of its business operations. Dividing the task framework along four pillars has allowed for simultaneous, top down and bottom up reinforcement of sustainable practices, as well as the integration of new tools, processes, and regulations that I merge over time.

The four pillars aim to foster a dynamic foundation for companies to understand where to act now, to adjust later and expand within organizational's sustainable software transformation. The four pillars are strategy, implementation. Operational compliance and regulations and within each of the pillars, we have designed a decision tree that will be constructed to guide organizations in transforming their software journey.

Chris Skipper: Some fantastic insights from pindi there, and I'm sure you can agree. The Toss project has an applicability outside of just software development. It's one of those projects that's really gonna grow exponentially in the next few years. Next up, we have green software patterns. Green software Patterns Project is an open source initiative designed to help software practitioners reduce emissions by applying vendor neutral best practices. Guests, Franziska Warncke and Liya Mathew; project leads for the initiative discussed how organizations like Aviva and MasterCard have successfully integrated these patterns to enhance software sustainability. They also explored the rigorous review process for new patterns, upcoming advancements, such as persona based approaches and how developers and researchers can contribute to the project.

That's one thing to remember about Backstage is actually highlights that there are so many projects going on at the GSF. We actually need more people to get involved. So if you are interested in getting involved, please Visit greensoftware.foundation to find out more. Let's hear now from Liya Mathew about the Green Software Patterns Project.

Liya Mathew: One of the core and most useful features of patterns is the ability to correlate the software carbon intensity specification. Think of it as a bridge that connects learning and measurement. When we look through existing catalog of patterns, one essential thing that stands out is their adaptability.

Many of these patterns not only aligned with sustainability, but also coincide with security and reliability best practices. The beauty of this approach is that we don't need to completely rewrite a software architecture. To make it more sustainable. Small actions like catching static data or providing a dark mode can make significant difference.

These are simple, yet effective steps that can lead us a long way towards sustainability. Also, we are nearing th