Fact Check: Ola Fagerström and Microsoft's Surface Emissions Estimator
04/26/23 • 45 min
In this episode, we have a very special guest for an episode of Fact Check on Environmental Variables, Ola Fagerström from Microsoft Surface joins host Asim Hussain to talk about his work on the Microsoft's Surface Emissions Estimator - an important tool that helps measure the carbon footprint of the device. Ola talks about how difficult it was to take into account everything from materials used, to manufacturing, to packaging, and even end-of-life disposal to give an accurate estimate of the emissions produced by each device; and how these principles can be applied to other areas of green software development.
Learn more about our people:
Find out more about the GSF:
Resources:
Ola Fagerström: When is the first company going to start to say, we only allow eight tabs open? Because if you start to have, I'm just making numbers up, 16 tabs, you might run to your boss and say, Hey, I need a device with the 32 gigs of memory because my memory is constantly filled. Yeah, sorry. We put a policy that you can only have eight tabs open because that will save on the memory, and therefore we can buy cheaper or devices that are actually greener.
Asim Hussain: Hello, and welcome to Environment Variables, brought to you by the Green Software Foundation. In each episode, we discuss the latest news and events surrounding green software. On our show, you can expect candid conversations with top experts in their field who have a passion for how to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of software.
I'm your host, Asim Hussain.
So welcome to Environment Variables, where we bring you the latest news and updates from the world of sustainable software development. I'm your host, Asim Hussain. In this episode, we have a very special guest for an episode of Fact check on Environment Variables from Microsoft Surface. We have technology specialist Ola Fagerström.
Ola Fagerström: Hi there, Asim. What a nice, uh, way to get introduced as a special guest and.
Asim Hussain: Probably worse ways of being introduced isn't there? Not so special guest anyway. Ola, like it's great to have you on the show. Obviously we were colleagues at Microsoft, we're both circling kind of the sustainability space. I'm not at Microsoft anymore. So to give our listeners some context, could yo...
Learn more about our people:
Find out more about the GSF:
Resources:
- Microsoft’s Surface Emissions Estimator Announcement
- Ola’s Post on LinkedIn about Microsoft Surface Emissions Estimator / LinkedIn [7:46]
- Energy Star Calculation / Energy Star [15:51]
- Microsoft Edge Green Tabs / Microsoft [23:13]
- Internal Carbon Fee / Microsoft [37:12]
- New EU Laws on CSRD / European Commission [41:59]
- Follow, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts
- Follow and rate on Spotify
- Watch our videos on The Green Software Foundation YouTube Channel!
- Connect with us on Twitter, Github and LinkedIn!
Ola Fagerström: When is the first company going to start to say, we only allow eight tabs open? Because if you start to have, I'm just making numbers up, 16 tabs, you might run to your boss and say, Hey, I need a device with the 32 gigs of memory because my memory is constantly filled. Yeah, sorry. We put a policy that you can only have eight tabs open because that will save on the memory, and therefore we can buy cheaper or devices that are actually greener.
Asim Hussain: Hello, and welcome to Environment Variables, brought to you by the Green Software Foundation. In each episode, we discuss the latest news and events surrounding green software. On our show, you can expect candid conversations with top experts in their field who have a passion for how to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of software.
I'm your host, Asim Hussain.
So welcome to Environment Variables, where we bring you the latest news and updates from the world of sustainable software development. I'm your host, Asim Hussain. In this episode, we have a very special guest for an episode of Fact check on Environment Variables from Microsoft Surface. We have technology specialist Ola Fagerström.
Ola Fagerström: Hi there, Asim. What a nice, uh, way to get introduced as a special guest and.
Asim Hussain: Probably worse ways of being introduced isn't there? Not so special guest anyway. Ola, like it's great to have you on the show. Obviously we were colleagues at Microsoft, we're both circling kind of the sustainability space. I'm not at Microsoft anymore. So to give our listeners some context, could yo...
In this episode, we have a very special guest for an episode of Fact Check on Environmental Variables, Ola Fagerström from Microsoft Surface joins host Asim Hussain to talk about his work on the Microsoft's Surface Emissions Estimator - an important tool that helps measure the carbon footprint of the device. Ola talks about how difficult it was to take into account everything from materials used, to manufacturing, to packaging, and even end-of-life disposal to give an accurate estimate of the emissions produced by each device; and how these principles can be applied to other areas of green software development.
Learn more about our people:
Find out more about the GSF:
Resources:
Ola Fagerström: When is the first company going to start to say, we only allow eight tabs open? Because if you start to have, I'm just making numbers up, 16 tabs, you might run to your boss and say, Hey, I need a device with the 32 gigs of memory because my memory is constantly filled. Yeah, sorry. We put a policy that you can only have eight tabs open because that will save on the memory, and therefore we can buy cheaper or devices that are actually greener.
Asim Hussain: Hello, and welcome to Environment Variables, brought to you by the Green Software Foundation. In each episode, we discuss the latest news and events surrounding green software. On our show, you can expect candid conversations with top experts in their field who have a passion for how to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of software.
I'm your host, Asim Hussain.
So welcome to Environment Variables, where we bring you the latest news and updates from the world of sustainable software development. I'm your host, Asim Hussain. In this episode, we have a very special guest for an episode of Fact check on Environment Variables from Microsoft Surface. We have technology specialist Ola Fagerström.
Ola Fagerström: Hi there, Asim. What a nice, uh, way to get introduced as a special guest and.
Asim Hussain: Probably worse ways of being introduced isn't there? Not so special guest anyway. Ola, like it's great to have you on the show. Obviously we were colleagues at Microsoft, we're both circling kind of the sustainability space. I'm not at Microsoft anymore. So to give our listeners some context, could yo...
Learn more about our people:
Find out more about the GSF:
Resources:
- Microsoft’s Surface Emissions Estimator Announcement
- Ola’s Post on LinkedIn about Microsoft Surface Emissions Estimator / LinkedIn [7:46]
- Energy Star Calculation / Energy Star [15:51]
- Microsoft Edge Green Tabs / Microsoft [23:13]
- Internal Carbon Fee / Microsoft [37:12]
- New EU Laws on CSRD / European Commission [41:59]
- Follow, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts
- Follow and rate on Spotify
- Watch our videos on The Green Software Foundation YouTube Channel!
- Connect with us on Twitter, Github and LinkedIn!
Ola Fagerström: When is the first company going to start to say, we only allow eight tabs open? Because if you start to have, I'm just making numbers up, 16 tabs, you might run to your boss and say, Hey, I need a device with the 32 gigs of memory because my memory is constantly filled. Yeah, sorry. We put a policy that you can only have eight tabs open because that will save on the memory, and therefore we can buy cheaper or devices that are actually greener.
Asim Hussain: Hello, and welcome to Environment Variables, brought to you by the Green Software Foundation. In each episode, we discuss the latest news and events surrounding green software. On our show, you can expect candid conversations with top experts in their field who have a passion for how to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of software.
I'm your host, Asim Hussain.
So welcome to Environment Variables, where we bring you the latest news and updates from the world of sustainable software development. I'm your host, Asim Hussain. In this episode, we have a very special guest for an episode of Fact check on Environment Variables from Microsoft Surface. We have technology specialist Ola Fagerström.
Ola Fagerström: Hi there, Asim. What a nice, uh, way to get introduced as a special guest and.
Asim Hussain: Probably worse ways of being introduced isn't there? Not so special guest anyway. Ola, like it's great to have you on the show. Obviously we were colleagues at Microsoft, we're both circling kind of the sustainability space. I'm not at Microsoft anymore. So to give our listeners some context, could yo...
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Asim Hussain: I'm talking to people in my family, in fact, who are like thinking, will I have a job in two years time? Will I have a job in three years time? And like as historically, we have ignored in the just transition the other side have created a lot of very unpleasant noises, which has forced us to deal with that.
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Anne Currie: Data centers in Greenland are an obvious thing because there's tons of free energy, green energy from ice melt runoff.
Chris Adams: Yeah.
Anne Currie: But one of the issues there is that nobody lives in Greenland to man the data center, but even few people live in space demand the data centers. So I would, I would hope that you would solve the Greenland issue first.
Use all that enormous amount of energy before you,
Chris Adams: Okay, so our site, so before we reach for the sky, let's sort out things down here on Earth. Yeah?
Hello, and welcome to Environment Variables, brought to you by the Green Software Foundation. In each episode, we discuss the latest...
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