Environment Variables

The Week in Green Software: Energy effects of War in Iran

Environment Variables

Show Notes

TWiGS hosts Tzviya and Kate are joined by Ryan Sholin of Electricity Maps to discuss how global events impact electricity availability, cost, and carbon intensity. They highlight that improving efficiency and better utilizing existing power grids could reduce the need for new energy infrastructure. The conversation connects energy awareness with software design decisions, emphasizing that developers and organizations can play a role in sustainability by aligning workloads with cleaner energy and understanding the broader energy context behind digital systems. Learn more about our people: Tzviya Siegman: LinkedIn | Website Ryan Sholin: LinkedIn | GitHub | Website Kate Goldenring: LinkedIn | GitHub | Website

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News: Exclusive: Google, Tesla, others tackle energy affordability | Axios [02:10] Virginia to utilities: Do more with the existing power grid | CanaryMedia [03:38] There's another energy market that may get hit harder than oil by Strait of Hormuz closure [10:08] PUE Ranking - Paweł Czyżak on LinkedIn [14:44] Markdown, llms.txt and AI crawlers | Dries Buytaert [25:44] Datacentre developers face calls to disclose effect on UK’s net emissions | The Guardian [39:14]

Events: LUT x Sustinaires | 25 Mar 7:15 AM CET (Remote) [41:29] UX Jumpstart | 26 Mar 2:00 PM CET (Virtual) [41:46] Are you speaking about Green Software? | GSF [41:59]

Resources: Marc Brooker's Blog [06:32] Environment Variables Ep 133: TWiGS: Who Pays for AI’s Energy Footprint? [07:09] US data centre efficiency ranked by PUE - Rod McLaren: Words that work TPU vs GPU: Which Is Better for AI Infrastructure in 2025? [19:57] TPUs improved carbon-efficiency of AI workloads by 3x | Google Cloud Blog Software Carbon Intensity for Artificial Intelligence [21:51] Hugging Face AI Energy Score Project [22:43] Google & Bing Warn: Markdown Files Can Increase Crawl Load and Cause SEO Issues [27:35] Introducing Markdown for Agents [28:57] agent-md | GitHub w3c-cg / ai-content-disclosure | GitHub [30:02] AI Preferences Measuring for Reporting vs Measuring for Action | GSF CarbonDB [34:22]

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