 We heard from Katrin yesterday during our panel session, which was really, really brilliant. But we have the treat of having Katrin introduce even more concepts to us today. Now, Katrin is a technology and climate researcher and also a consultant and has some brilliant ideas in that area. As senior program manager of the Green Web Foundation, she's done plenty of work with others in this area that I think we'll get a tour of, which will be really fascinating. So, Katrin, I'd like to invite you to the stage. Everyone, can we please? Thanks so much. Thank you. Yeah, thank you so much for coming here super early. Wow. Like, take a moment of appreciation that you actually made it here. Thank you. My name is Katrin and I'm going to talk about a fossil free internet by 2030. For the next 15 minutes, and then we're going to have some time for Q&A and maybe also discuss a bit about sustainability with the people sitting around you so we can start a bit of a conversation as well. So, fossil free internet by 2030, why does this really matter? We are living in a climate crisis. The science is very, very clear. And while the climate crisis is only one of the crisis that we are currently facing, it's also actually more of an error than one single issue at stake. So, we need really multiple responses to this crisis from policy, from technologists, from actorists across the world, because it affects different areas and because it's going to affect us in multiple, multiple ways. It is already like we have droughts. We had a lot of rain the last few weeks, I think, were very clear in what kind of crisis we're in. At the same time also, we're in an area of digital infrastructures and digitalization, how we say in Germany, where we're really digitizing a lot and also that has a big impact on our lives for work, labor rights, children rights, privacy, there's a lot of other issues coming up. So, we're kind of living in these two eras, both digitalization and climate crisis and the question is, and that's still pretty under-researched, how do these two intersect and how can we create technologies that might help to mitigate the crisis, but also what do we have to pay attention to when it comes to specifically the internet. The IPCC report from 2022, just to crown us a bit, says that the cumulative scientific evidence is unequivocal. Climate change is a threat to human well-being and planetary health. Any further delay in concerted anticipatory global action on adaptation and mitigation will miss a brief and rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a livable and sustainable future for all. So, how does technology come into that and how specifically the internet? Right now, the internet is the largest coal-powered machine. By that, we mean that the internet is currently responsible for around two to three of the world's carbon emissions, which is bigger than the entire aviation industry. How does this work? The internet and all digital infrastructures need a lot of energy running on data centers and these data centers are still mainly coal-powered. So, that's where the issue comes in and that's also why we can say that the internet currently is the largest coal-powered machine. So, why we often imagine the internet as a cloud or as something that's like intangible above us, not really has any impact on the climate. Actually, the impact is very, very real and we really have to work on that. At the same time, also, it requires a lot of raw materials, which we often forget as well. So, while it is supposedly a cloud, there's also a lot of natural resources, land use, water use that comes into place when we're actually building these digital infrastructures. One really good example is specifically in Europe, where this shift to e-mobility or green mobility, where currently a lot of lithium is needed. One of the lightest wear materials on earth. And this lithium mining is a really big issue, particularly in the global south, where indigenous communities are displaced, water rights are taken because lithium is needed for the so-called green transition. So, there's a lot of power dynamics at stake and a lot of things that we really need to look more into them, because it's not so clear what's the benefits and also what's the causes. And I mentioned this yesterday also in our panel. The internet itself is also becoming a brittle monoculture. So, right now, we have seven big companies that are kind of monopolizing the internet. And so, also, that is technically a very, very big issue when thinking around sustainability, because, yeah, there's just not a lot of alternatives to that. So, also, looking at the internet itself, it's a big issue around monocultures. Technologists but also citizens and users hands run the risk of enabling a pretty destructive default when we're looking at internet infrastructure today. So, what can we do about it? What we've noticed in our work at GreenWeb Foundation is that particularly technologists tend to look mainly into energy usage and also into carbon emissions. But this is a pretty well-known concept. It's called the carbon tunnel vision, which is only looking at carbon, but not at the bigger picture around. So, for example, overconsumption, inequality, biodiversity loss, education or health. So, how can we kind of open this tunnel vision that only focuses on carbon? I know that carbon is currently the best measurement we have to measure these things, but it's also really important to kind of approach this topic from a more holistic perspective. And I brought you two models that I think are really interesting to at least start the conversation. They're not like finalized models or anything, but that kind of can maybe make you think a bit more also about your practice as developers. So, while we often look at energy, there's also a shift that we see to also look at power. So, what are the power structures on the internet and how can we challenge them? The first model that I brought to you is the donut economic model. Who knows about this? One, two, three, four, five people. Amazing. The donut economic model was developed by Kate Raffford. It's a diagram that's shaped like a donut, surprise. And it basically works with this idea of planetary boundaries. So, what kind of planetary boundaries do we have are put in place and how can we within these boundaries have a good and sustainable living together? So, what you see inside of the donut, that's the social foundation. Access to food, access to water, health, energy, jobs. That's like the social foundation that we as a society would need in order to thrive. And then, there's the safe and just space for humanity. So, that's like the donut itself. And then outside anything that extends this donut is kind of what would disrupt these limits. So, chemical pollution, ozone depletion, and biodiversity loss. And I think this model is specifically interesting when we're looking into social or sustainable innovation because it's really about finding this sweet spot in the middle, like how can we innovate technology that's within these boundaries and that ensures these kinds of dimensions. The second model is called consumption intensity and direction model, CID. Our co-director Chris developed it in conversations with technologists and it's really specifically looking into technology. So, consumption is the first layer. Consumption is really the basic layer that asks how to reduce the amount of technology we use. So, in a very individual, maybe developer level, like how can we reduce the stuff that we're creating? How, for example, can we reduce the amount of data that we're collecting? That's also gonna, for example, reduce emissions. The second one, intensity, is looking more into how can we make tech in a less harmful way? So, how can we change a bit the tech landscape that we currently have? And the third one, that's also the most difficult one, direction, is what are we generally accelerating towards? So, how can we shift the power dynamics in the tech industry in general? So, it's like the biggest question and there's also this amazing diagram with impact and difficulty. You can see the most difficult but also the most impactful would be this idea of direction. So, really changing how we use tech today and how we also work with technology. I brought you some of the questions that can be raised. So, it's more of an exploration rather than like a concrete set and finalized set of questions. But it's some of the ideas that you could use for consumption intensity and direction. So, for example, consumption is a very basic individual idea for switching things off when you're leaving the office or switching things off when you're leaving home using less data. In intensity, for example, it's more also already about buying reused hardware or also thinking about repair within companies. So, really also working with repair and reuse to kind of mitigate. And also, you know, you see also comments, open source and public good. So, really creating technology that can be used for a lot of people and from a lot of people. And then finally, the most difficult one is definitely also the direction. So, for example, changing the narrative how we're thinking about technologies. So, does tech always have to be the solution or how can we use technology in a way that it's really innovative and sustainable at the same time. So, changing a bit the narrative how we think about tech and also that's Chris' favorite, change how you do your job. So, yeah. There's also the cat community I can recommend, your climate action tech community where there's a lot of technologists in there that specifically want to work with climate and exchange between companies and organizations how to do that. So, that would be one example. So, as you can see, it's definitely complex. There's not all answers provided. I also mentioned in the panel yesterday there's still a lot of data that is missing. So, it's the start of a conversation that we have to have. But also, yeah, I think it's really, really important that we start talking about these things. It's hard for everyone and that's also why I think it's so important to be open about it and learn in the open. So, I brought you some ideas where this can go to from our work, but also maybe for your work. So, it's, yeah, just some ideas that what can be done about it. So, one is that we currently have the biggest open data set on websites that run on green energy. So, if you want to look into that, it's actually really interesting. We verify hosting providers if they provide green energy, if they run on green energy or not. And you can work with the API. So, for example, web page test is using the API to determine if websites run on green energy or not. Branch Magazine is also one idea where we created a website that is running on, that bases the content on the website on if your carbon intensity is high or low. So, if you have a high carbon intensity, you can't see the images. You have to click on them, but it doesn't download automatically the images. So, it plays a bit with this idea around high and low carbon intensity, depending on where you're logging into with your device. And also, do we always have to have everything available on a website or can we maybe play a bit with that? And then the third one is the Green Web Fellows. That's really about intersecting digital rights with climate justice. So, what we've seen is that digital rights, you know, when we're thinking about privacy, bias in AI, data protection, really needs to be more intersected also with the climate justice movement around the world. And this is, for example, one of our fellows, she's working specifically on providing digital security tools for activists in Sub-Saharan Africa. So, how can we as technologists also support climate activism and how can we bridge these fields more together? Yeah, so, basically, if you want to learn more, I would recommend you check out the developer site. We have quite a lot of interesting open tools also, for example, CO2.js, which is an open source JavaScript library that allows you to measure and track the CO2 emissions of the digital services that you use. And I brought you this, basically, to show a bit what kind of direction can we go to also in the open source community and how can we start building this together. So, yeah, that's it. Thank you. Well, thank you so much. That's fascinating. Now, questions. I would love to hear some questions from you. I'll ask the first one to kind of heat things up. Oh, we have one already, so. But just a reminder to Lightning Talk speakers, if you could gently make your way over there just to prep a little bit for the Lightning Talks, that would be great. If you do have a question and you're in Lightning Talk, we'll just find you over there, so there's no problem there. Ready for your first question? Well, would you consider freedom of information, especially big government databases? Would you consider that useful? Yeah, definitely. So, opening up data and also Freedom of Information Act, like, that's also a lot of work that has to be done. So, there's also this community called Open Climate that works specifically with open environmental data. And they've also realized we often need to have a lot of data, for example, about a river or, you know, certain things that are happening in our communities in order to be able to speak up in front of authorities. So, this whole movement on open environmental data is also very, very interesting and it's really worth it to look into it. Hi, thank you for the presentation. You mentioned consumption as one of the ways to lower the carbon footprint. I'm wondering if there is some initiative also to lower our usage of social media, for example. I'm seeing social media is something that is not... Oops, sorry. Necessary, no? Necessary, sometimes it is, but many times it is not to stay on social media, no? So, yeah, because I didn't see in the list and I was wondering if there is some initiative in this sense. Thank you. I can go back. I'm sure there is an initiative, I don't know. But there is quite a lot of people working on reducing data and then also by that reducing CO2 emissions. I'm not sure if it's the only way forward, but it's interesting to look into it for sure. Thank you. It was really interesting. A question about these slides, about intensity and one action would be to define metrics other than growth. So my question is what do you think about degrowth? Yes, we do think about degrowth. Well, I think basically it's about not growing a company or, for example, growing users and then also looking into different metrics. One of the things I did last week was to work with artists at Ars Electronica and we defined some research questions around degrowth when it comes to the internet. And I thought what was very interesting was this question around slowness. So how can we maybe also develop slow technologies more like as artists, you know, but kind of challenge this idea of optimizing tech or optimizing usability and maybe also sometimes disrupting some things. There's also this super nice low-tech magazine. You know it, right? Yeah. That basically only runs when the sun is shining on the panel. So when the weather is bad, the website is just down. And I mean, obviously, this is just an experiment, but it's just questioning a bit like do we always have to have availability on the internet or can we sometimes switch things off? Like can we slow down a bit? It's just, yeah, an interesting thought experiment, I think. Do we have another question in the audience perhaps? I have a question. Oh, no. Here's the hard question. You mentioned open source quite a few times as kind of an integral solution to some of these climate issues. Can you talk a little bit more about what it is about open source specifically versus maybe closed source solutions that makes it kind to our environment? Yeah, so it's actually a pretty challenging because right now we see that mainly the closed source software companies are the ones that are really pushing specifically towards carbon neutrality. So they're actually really strong with it, but often that's also related to this creating a monoculture. These systems are often not very resilient specifically when it comes to all the crisis that we're currently facing. So that's where we see like the potential in open source as well to kind of create a more diverse ecosystem just as a more diverse ecosystem in nature also works better than a monoculture, yeah. So one of the examples is also carbon offsetting and by growing trees in order to offset carbon. This is something that a lot of tech companies are doing at the moment, but especially these offsetting plantations are often monocultures. So what happened, for example, in Florida was that especially these monocultures were burning down. So offsetting can also be a bit of an issue because you often plant only the same tree next to each other. And then once there's a fire, everything burns down really fast. So there's just a lot of different dimensions to take into account, yeah. I think I have a bit more of a maybe a technical question and it's more to maybe get us thinking about this, but I've often heard that some people believe that the solutions to our climate will come with technological solutions. So maybe more efficient CPUs, GPUs, those kind of things. Do you have any thoughts on that as a potential solution? Yeah, I don't think we can generally say it's good or it's bad when we look into the history of technology specifically when things became more efficient. There were a lot of these so-called rebound effects. So basically you make something more efficient but then the usage of it just gets higher. So there is a bit of a question around efficiency and if only efficiency is going to save us, which is also why we put this direction as the last dimension in there to really show that it's not only around efficiency and optimization because sometimes especially like exactly these things can actually cause rebound effects, so even more usage of it. It's not easy. Of course, the important things never are. Yeah. Do we have another last question in the audience, anyone? Well, oh, there's three people over there. Yeah, thank you for the presentation. I would like to know how do you think about the current developments in AI especially with the view on resources and water usage and so on? Yeah, there is this amazing visual from Kate Crawford and Vlad Aniola. It's called Anatomy of an AI system. You can also look it up. It's also online. And it's basically this map that maps out how much labor, how much material, how much resources actually go into the development of artificial intelligence or machine learning algorithms and like how much is actually needed because AI is also one of the things, you know, we think it's just a technology, it's just a solution, but it also has a real-world material impact. So I would definitely also look into that. I also said yesterday on the panel that AI is also really, really useful specifically if you look at like global scale issues at stake. So some of the current issues we can also only understand through AI and through the amount of data that we have currently. So it's not black and white basically. Well, Katrin, thank you so much. Thank you. Can you help me in thanking Katrin? Yeah, thank you.