A collection of 11 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 moreI worked with a stellar team of the world’s top experts on computing’s effect on energy and emissions to craft this commentary for Nature, which came out today (April 22, 2024): Luers, Amy, Jonathan Koomey, Eric Masanet, Owen Gaffney, Felix Creutzig, Juan Lavista Ferres, and Eric Horvitz. 2024.
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 moreI and Professor Eric Masanet of UC Santa Barbara have a new commentary article out today in the refereed journal Joule. It explores four common pitfalls that cause researchers and commentators to exaggerate information technology electricity use and emissions, and suggests four ways industry and researchers can avoid spreading such
Read moreMy keynote talk today for the iTherm 2021 technical conference is an expansion of points made in a commentary article by me and Professor Eric Masanet, UCSB, which is “in press” at Joule right now (more when that’s published). I presented nine different high-profile misconceptions about electricity use and
Read moreMy talk was titled “Information and communications technology (ICT) and the energy/climate transition”, and I presented it today (November 24, 2020) at the 3rd Vienna Energy Strategy Dialogue, on the Implications of the Global Energy Transition”, Vienna, Austria. The key points: • Direct electricity used by ICT is modest and
Read moreMy new report on Bitcoin electricity use is out this morning: Koomey, Jonathan. 2019. Estimating Bitcoin Electricity Use: A Beginner’s Guide. Washington, DC: Coin Center. May 7. [https://coincenter.org/entry/bitcoin-electricity] Here’s the abstract for the report: Abstract The rapid emergence of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies has
Read moreCern datacenter Photo credit: By Hugovanmeijeren (Own work) [GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0], via Wikimedia Commons I’ve been struggling for years to convince executives in large enterprises to fix the incentive, reporting, and other structural problems in data centers. The folks in the data center know that
Read moreImage: Critical data centre at University of Hertford. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike Unported 3.0 license. The Wall Street Journal today has an article by Bob McMillan highlighting my work with Anthesis and TSO Logic on zombie servers (those that are using electricity but delivering no useful
Read more