Greening The Web & Our Digital Infrastructure w/ Chris Adams, Director @ Green Web Foundation, Organizer @ ClimateAction.Tech

You've Been Warmed

English - March 27, 2020 14:01 - 44 minutes - 45.2 MB - ★★★★★ - 2 ratings
Earth Sciences Science Technology clean energy carbon nuclear carbon offsets carbon removal green energy climate change greenhouse gases co2 emissions renewables Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed

Previous Episode: Microsoft's Net Zero 2030 Target & Greening Cloud Computing w/ Asim Hussain, Green Cloud Advocacy Lead at Microsoft

Next Episode: Successful Climate Communication Based On Science w/ Max Boykoff, Director of CSTPR at CU Boulder

This episode of You've Been Warmed features Chris Adams - one of the directors of the Green Web Foundation, an organizer for ClimateAction.Tech and founder of a small consultancy called Greening.Digital

As an avid techie, Chris is extremely knowledgeable when it comes to web technology and its implications for climate change. Because everything we use in our digital infrastructure is based on data centers - of which a lot run on energy derived from fossil fuels - it's important to understand how we can replace the source of that energy with renewables.

It's obviously an extremely complex topic to talk about, which is why Chris' pragmatic and informed approach was so educational. He took me through the various decisions that any company makes when deciding on hosting (and the inherent trade-offs that come with that), as well as what percentages of online domains currently run on renewable energy (and how that has evolved over the past year). There was an interesting discussion regarding web hosting providers and how the oligopoly formed by Microsoft, Google and Amazon is extremely difficult to tackle.

We then dove into a fascinating topic that involved how companies treat their emissions reductions for Scopes 1,2 and 3, how precisely they calculate those emissions and what kind of 'accounting' tricks they might pull to paint a different picture. We contrasted the approach that Stripe has taken vs that of Amazon and we ended up discussing greenwashing and how Corporate Social Responsibility is dealt with in various companies across the world.

Finally, Chris delivered a great summary on ClimateAction.Tech - a community I highly encourage all of my listeners to join as it has a lot of value & interesting people to connect with.

Let's dive straight in - let me know if you enjoy this one!

CHRIS' RELEVANT LINKS

Chris' Twitter - https://twitter.com/mrchrisadams

Green Web Foundation - https://www.thegreenwebfoundation.org/

ClimateAction.Tech - https://climateaction.tech/

Greening Digital - https://greening.digital/

TIMECODES

3:50 - Chris' Background & Involvement In The Climate Space

5:00 - Why Do We Need To Make The Web 'Greener'?

8:00 - How Can Companies Reduce Emissions From Their Digital Operations?

14:53 - The Google, Microsoft & Amazon Web Hosting Oligopoly

22:05 - Stripe vs Amazon + Scope 1,2 & 3 Emissions