The Environmental Cost of AI

With the UK Government's recent announcement about investing heavily in AI, it's appropriate to ask: what is the environmental footprint of all the computing infrastructure that this AI requires?

The answer is simple: it's massive. While there are huge uncertainties, some of the projections have the AI boom causing data centres to generate more carbon emissions than Africa and South America combined. 

The recently announced plans for AI expansion lead to huge increases in resource requirements, and on relatively short timescales. The power needed by AI might exceed that used in all the world's current data centres within 3 years.

That's going to need a lot more electricity, which is likely to increase carbon emissions in the short term, before renewable generation ramps up – and that’s not to mention the carbon footprint of putting up such massive buildings to house the servers and manufacturing the servers that go into them. 

For the longer term, some of the tech giants are starting to look at small modular reactors (SMR, i.e. small nuclear reactors) to power their data centres. Microsoft is trying to bring one of the reactors at Three Mile Island back online. Even if you can generate the electricity, generally there isn't enough grid capacity to get it to the right place, which is one reason why there's such interest in putting the generator, such as an SMR, right next to a data centre.

It's not just drawing electrical power that's a problem. Gargantuan amounts of water, already a scarce resource, are needed for cooling, as all this electricity gets converted into heat.

All this environmental damage leaves open another question: will the benefits from AI outweigh the environmental damage it causes?

For a good overview of the issues about AI and sustainability, this report from the Green Web Foundation is a good read, and this article from UNEP closes with five recommendations to “rein in the environmental fallout of AI”. A great book on the topic is the “Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence” by Kate Crawford.

To find out how to turn off AI in your search engine or on your device, just search the phrase “how to turn off AI on…” and instructions often come up.

Blog post by Peter Tribble. Peter also has a personal website: https://ptribble.blogspot.com/

Improving your web experience - and saving carbon emissions

We spend a lot of our time browsing the web, but have we thought of the carbon emissions involved in getting a web page to be shown on our screen?

There's a long chain involved. The web page has to be stored on a server, potentially processed for consumption, sent out across the network, being passed through multiple devices on its path to you, before finally being processed by your own device so as to look just right for you to read it.

Fortunately, much of the work involved in calculating the environmental impact of the web has been done for you. Sites such as Website Carbon and Ecograder can estimate the carbon emissions due to viewing a web page. This takes a range of factors into account, from storage and processing of the page, transmitting it across the network, but also whether the server is powered by electricity from renewables or fossil fuels.

Review of 2024

How was 2024 for you? Do you even remember? Reviewing our achievements helps to give us a boost for the year to come. So here is a boost for all our members, and an enticement for anyone considering joining in, of how much fun we have..

This is mostly based on the report for the AGM in October, including some highlights that appeal to me. You can look at the slides in full here.

Repair Café (partners with Cambridge Carbon Footprint).

The Repair Café project, which is a partnership with Cambridge Carbon Footprint (CCF), now has more than 40 groups in Cambridgeshire so there are several repair cafes a month depending on how far you are prepared to travel (see events coming up). This year on International Repair Day (19th October) there was one in partnership with the Grand Arcade and there were also ones in Cottenham and in Haddenham on the same day. Of the three we had the highest rate of successful repairs, though admittedly not by much. The picture below was taken before the end. Our final figures were 40 items and 73% repaired.

Picture credit to Sandy and CCF

These events would not happen without the repairer volunteers and this year we are especially grateful to the team from Sentec who have proved keen supporters. Also during the year we signed the Repair and Reuse Declaration calling for more support for the circular economy including making repair more affordable, expanding regulations to cover more consumer goods and setting repairability standards.

Empty Common Community Garden and the Resilience Garden

Empty Common Community Garden continues to thrive, and the hut is ever more popular as a venue – sometimes for cover for a rainy day – sometimes for a party.

This year we launched the Permaculture Trail on the website, linking a virtual tour of the garden with permaculture principles. 

Charlotte who runs the ECCG is also in charge of the Garden of Resilience by the Guildhall - another demonstration of permaculture.

Water usage survey

What do you do to save water? In recent years we have seen our chalk streams suffering due to lack of water because we take too much for our taps. Also, we use a lot of water for hygiene, perhaps more than we need. This year we ran a survey, asking some quite intimate questions. Read the results here.

Water Sensitive Cambridge

Also on a water theme, we were partners with Water Sensitive Cambridge, which was seeded by Transition Cambridge and is now a CIC. Their aims are to make places for water and nature, and change how we think about and treat water. They made their first on-street rain garden this spring in East Chesterton and it proved itself in a downpour soon after, with reduced flooding that dissipated quickly - as we reported on this blog.

Reduced flooding and rapid dissipation of the rainwater after a storm

See more pictures and videos on their website.

Films

We showed four films this year at Storey's Field Community Centre, all on an environmental theme and well attended. Each film was followed by a discussion with the audience and in most cases with input from members of the team that made the film. In February we showed Pure Clean Water which is about Hobson's Brook and how our overuse of the chalk aquifer has affected it - and what can be done. This showing was the inspiration for the water use survey. In the Autumn we ran a season of three films: Six Inches of Soil, Once you know, and Fugolburna. We'd like to do more so let us know if you have ideas for films to show.

Other groups and partnerships

Other projects continue to thrive such as:

• Energy Group – this year’s topics included DIY energy saving, air quality and inter-seasonal storage
• A Toys Life and Beyond - swapping childrens’ toys and learning about the circular economy while supporting young families.
• The Environmental Discussion and Reading Group 

Also we are delighted when groups we have spawned continue to grow. The Resilience Web is now a CIC and has directories for eight distinct nexuses of community groups including Cambridge (3 webs), Bath, York, Durham, Norwich and South West London. The new "A Penny Saved" web highlights groups in Cambridge that help save money alongside their environmental or social justice aims.

We hope some of these things will inspire you to take action on climate change. Perhaps you will get involved in one or more of our groups, or perhaps you will browse our website for advice such as the Permaculture Trail or the Energy Group Advice pages. The important thing is to take some action. We are making progress on climate change but not fast enough.

How to use the Christmas break?

Many of us get a week or so off over Christmas (whether we celebrate Christmas or not). For two days there are no shops open, though there is always online shopping and social media to keep us amused. But don’t you think the winter break should be special?

Special means different. Different can mean different things but it needs to involve a change of pace and a change of focus. I like to take a walk and see what I can see, or meet up with friends and have a natter with no distracting mobiles. The important thing is to slow down and look outside of yourself – at people you (think you) know well, or complete strangers, or just the world. The main thing is to look and to listen.

 

I am no photographer but here are some pictures I have taken on my walks around Cambridge at Christmas time.

 

This picture was taken on Christmas Day last year. The saddle cover must be 9 years old because the pantomime is dated 2014.

 

Frosted spider web, woven on temporary fencing by Jesus Lock, which was under maintenance.

An attic window which has frozen up on the outside. These frost patterns seem to be increasingly rare, presumably due to climate warming.

 

Not Christmas Day - Feb. 2024- but it's a lovely picture anyway. Floods are getting more common but it is still possible to have fun like this little boy (click on the picture for a larger version).

Transition Cambridge likes to celebrate the new year with a gentle walk. Next year we will meet by the Green Dragon bridge. All welcome, old friends and new.

Transition Cambridge New Year's meander last year (or was it the year before?) From the Chisholm Trail, near the football ground. From the left, Ben, Liz, Anna, Sam, me (Nicola), Charlotte, Tamsin, Rory and Jacky.

Making Halloween and Christmas fun *and* sustainable

I saw a ghostly crisp packet in the road last night – it seemed to be positively luminous but it was just reflecting the street lights. This, plus a black dog in evil demon costume, reminded me we are fast approaching Halloween, which is a great opportunity for harmless fun. Ghoulish costumes to startle passers-by, sweets to enjoy, maybe some ancient magic spells …

Photo by Beth Teutschmann on Unsplash

However, like the plastic crisp packet, Halloween and Christmas can be very wasteful - if we are not careful. Cheap (plastic) spooky costumes that we wear once and then throw away and sweet wrappers that do not get recycled – these are the main sources of extra waste at Halloween. WRAP has much to say about this.

Here are some easy ways to reduce waste at Halloween and Christmas:

Making a rain garden

This new little garden is flooded after the storm - but no worries because it is a rain garden and this is meant to happen. The idea is to take water off the road - hence the kerb cuts to allow water to flow into the three new sunken gardens along the grass verge. Fallowfield has poor drainage and floods regularly after heavy rain, but this time there was much less flooding than usual and it dissipated more quickly. The plants need to tolerate both floods and droughts, as that is the weather we get these days.

After the rain, Fallowfield rain garden number 1

Why a water usage survey?

Transition Cambridge is running a survey on how we use water, and what water saving measures we take. Why? Water shortage has been a concern for some time but seeing the film Pure Clean Water reminded me again of the acute need for us to reduce water demand. Lack of water has recently stymied government plans for growth but even with no extra homes or businesses we do not have enough water. I could go on but perhaps you know already – or you can read about it here.

Suffice to say, climate change means more extreme weather – wetter winters like this one but also drier ones and longer droughts. Our water supply from the chalk aquifer under the Gog Magog hills buffers some of the variation but has its limits – and our current level of demand has already caused irreparable damage to chalk streams which is why Nine Wells is no longer an SSSI [1].

Our water is incredibly cheap: in Cambridge the average water bill (excluding sewerage) is currently £163/year – 45p/day - which is 29% lower than the national average [2]. This price hardly reflects its value to our health and wellbeing, and does little to encourage water saving, even if you do have a meter. However there is a lot we can do with little or no effort. How often do you wash your clothes or bedlinen? Do you save water from cooking vegetables to pre-soak the dirty dishes? Do you flush the toilet every time you have a pee?