A collection of 12 posts
Our new article in Joule on data needs for understanding AI electricity use came out online today in Joule (link will be good until October 8, 2024). Here’s the summary section: As the famous quote from George Box goes, “All models are wrong, but some are useful.” Bottom-up AI
Read moreMy friend and colleague Danny Cullenward and I were on KQED Forum this morning, talking about the environmental impacts of our digital lives. Lesley McClurg was the host. You shouldn’t worry at all about your digital footprint, as we discussed in the show. It’s small and constantly improving,
Read moreIn 2011, we replaced lighting cans with LED inserts in our house, instantly reducing lighting energy use by 50% or more. The inserts looked like the ones on the left in the photos below. Recently (September 2023) I needed to buy a few more to replace some of the old
Read moreEvery year since Chris Nelder started the Energy Transition Show, he’s interviewed me for the annual roundup episode, and this year is no exception. We discuss the proper role of government in a capitalist economy, climate change doomism, how the fossil fuel industry rigs the system, and the difficulties
Read moreSam Naffziger of AMD and I just published our report on the efficiency of supercomputers over time. Here’s the abstract: The energy efficiency of computing devices is a topic of ongoing research and public interest. While trends in the efficiency of laptops and desktops have been well studied, there
Read moreThe US EIA Monthly Energy Review (Table 7.2a) includes data on net generation for the US (utilities plus independent generators), and from those data we can say something interesting about what was driving declines in coal generation from 2015 to 2016. The conventional wisdom is that cheap natural gas
Read morePhoto: Chris Calwell (left) and Jonathan Koomey (right) in 2010 presenting Art Rosenfeld with recognition of a new unit coined in his honor, in a peer reviewed article in Environmental Research Letters. One Rosenfeld equals savings of 3 billion kWh/year (at the meter) and reductions of 3 million metric
Read moreFor the past two years I’ve been working with a distinguished team of analysts associated with the Risky Business project to analyze possible pathways to substantially reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the US. Our new report, From Risk to Return: Investing in a Clean Energy Economy, just came out
Read moreMy colleague Sam Naffziger (AMD) and I just published our latest article titled “Energy efficiency of computing: What’s next?” in the magazine Electronic Design. Here’s the abstract, which didn’t make it into the actual online article: Today’s computing systems operate at peak output a tiny fraction
Read moreThe following is a joint post from Danny Cullenward and Jonathan G. Koomey. ______________________________________________________________ Image Credit: Michael Maggs CC BY-SA 3.0 File:Bouncing ball strobe edit.jpg Created: 29 September 2007 More excuses from the Breakthrough Institute on data quality Dr. Harry Saunders, a Senior Fellow at the Breakthrough Institute,
Read more______________________________________________________________________ The following is a joint blog post by Danny Cullenward and Jonathan Koomey ______________________________________________________________________ Last Monday (January 4th, 2016), we published a postsummarizing the implications of our critique of Harry Saunders’ article on rebound effects in the US economy. We have since received thoughtful comments from Dr. Saunders (a Senior Fellow
Read moreI and Sam Naffziger of Advanced Micro Devices just published a short article in IEEE Spectrum’s April 2015 issue, which happens to be the Moore’s law 50th anniversary issue. Here are the first couple of paragraphs: The graph posted above summarizes the main story, which is that peak
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