Chris Adams is joined by Adrian Cockcroft, former VP of Cloud Architecture Strategy at AWS, a pioneer of microservices at Netflix, and contributor to the Green Software Foundation’s Real Time Cloud project. They explore the evolution of cloud sustainability—from monoliths to microservices to serverless—and what it really takes to track carbon emissions in real time. Adrian explains why GPUs offer rare transparency in energy data, how the Real Time Cloud dataset works, and what’s holding cloud providers back from full carbon disclosure. Plus, he shares his latest obsession: building a generative AI-powered house automation system using agent swarms.
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1:18:37
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1:18:37
Backstage: Software Standards Working Group SCI
In this Backstage episode of Environment Variables, podcast producer Chris Skipper highlights the Green Software Foundation’s Software Standards Working Group—chaired by Henry Richardson (WattTime) and Navveen Balani (Accenture). This group is central to shaping global benchmarks for sustainable software. Key initiatives discussed include the Software Carbon Intensity (SCI) Specification, its extensions for AI and the web, the Real-Time Energy and Carbon Standard for cloud providers, the SCI Guide, and the TOSS framework. Together, these tools aim to drive emissions reduction through interoperable, transparent, and globally applicable standards.
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16:06
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16:06
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!
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25:20
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25:20
Open Source Carbon Footprints
Chris Adams is joined by Thibaud Colas; product lead at Torchbox, president of the Django Software Foundation, and lead on Wagtail CMS. They explore the role of open source projects in tackling digital carbon emissions and discuss Wagtail's pioneering carbon footprint reporting, sustainable default settings, and grid-aware website features, all enabled through initiatives like Google Summer of Code. Thibaud shares how transparency, contributor motivation, and clear governance can drive impactful sustainability efforts in web development, and why measuring and reducing emissions in the Python ecosystem matters now more than ever.
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42:29
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42:29
Cloud Native Attitude
Environment Variables host Anne Currie welcomes Jamie Dobson, co-founder of Container Solutions and author of the upcoming book Visionaries, Rebels and Machines. Together, they explore the history and future of cloud computing through the lens of sustainability, efficiency, and resilience. Drawing on insights from their past work, including The Cloud Native Attitude and Building Green Software, they discuss how cloud-native principles can support the transition to renewable energy, the potential and pitfalls of AI, and why behavioral change, regulation, and smart incentives are key to a greener digital future.
Each episode we discuss the latest news regarding how to reduce the emissions of software and how the industry is dealing with its own environmental impact. Brought to you by The Green Software Foundation.
Netherlands