Green Data Center Incentives with Platform.sh’s Leah Goldfarb

This is Techstrong tv. Welcome to Techstrong tv. I'm Bonnie Schneider, and today we are thrilled to have Leah Goldfarb joining us from Platform.

Sh Leah brings a wealth of experience in environmental science and policy. We're excited to learn more about platform sh as an innovative approach to business sustainability. Leah, it's wonderful to have you here.

Well, thank you Bonnie, for adding me back. I should be, Yes. Can you tell me for those that aren't familiar with your work, a little bit about your background and your role at Platform?

Sh? Yes. So my background originally was in atmospheric chemistry with a focus on climate change.

I've worked for 10 years on sustainability at the international level, and also worked for two years at the technical support unit, the IPCC. So I've been passionate about sustainability generally, but my specialty is really around carbon and I am platform shs, environmental impact officer. So really hired to look at how to reduce emissions for this, uh, french tech startup in the cloud.

But also more generally, How does platform sh promote, um, sustainability and tech particularly, uh, with its recent 3% discount for deploying apps on low carbon regions? Yeah, so in sustainability, we often talk about people, planet profit, and this was really putting together both the, uh, the environmental component and also looking at the business, uh, structure as well. So this past month we've been, we launched, um, platform, uh, launched, uh, Upson, which is our new offering.

And it's, it has this, it runs on the same proven infrastructure that platform has created, but there are some new twists to it. It's a resource-based offering. And what we are offering is 3% discount on the resources on platform.

Sh if you pick a data center that runs on low carbon en energy, and the exciting thing we have to announce with that is so far for the clients that have signed up, 80% of them have opted for the greener data center. So this is really quite new for us. You know, that is really exciting to hear because it seems like this, um, turnaround in interest is, is now really, really reflected in this statistics at 80% that that's an impressive number.

Yeah, and I think it's showing that people are getting educated on how, um, emissions are calculated, how carbon audits are done in the cloud, and that, you know, the greenhouse gas protocol, which is the international standard, used to calculate emissions in the cloud, uses a location based strategy. So the carbon intensity of the underlying electricity grid supporting the data center is very important. Well, data centers are certainly in the news and looking for ways to have more efficient energy.

How do you think this initiative with platform sh is gonna drive that conversation? So, hosting in the cloud is a complex and technical subject, and ups upson and platform uses a technique called platform as a service, which really neutralizes the resources you used in the cloud. Um, for example, our carbon auditor found that our usage of, of CPUs on upson was 12 times more efficient than a standard deployment on AWS's.

That's Amazon's, uh, web services, uh, elastic Cloud two, which is a standard offering. So again, as people get more educated about how to calculate emissions in the cloud, they'll be looking for platform as a service as a way to even further reduce their emissions in the cloud. And then if they wanna take it one step further, they can also think about, you know, that underlying geolocation of the electricity supporting that data center.

What challenges and opportunities do you see in promoting greener hosting solutions and how does Platform sh plan to address them? So I would say actually one of the biggest challenges is that people are interested in the field, but maybe they don't know the definitions. They don't know how the calculations are done.

So the big challenges around education and just showing, uh, how a carbon audit is done, uh, what are the levers people can use, because there's, um, I think there's a, a conception out there that, you know, I think we have these, uh, websites that just say, enter your URL and we'll tell you what your, how clean your data center is. And that type of approach, uh, measures, uh, really the network component, the pinging back and forth and doesn't consider the geolocation, doesn't consider whether it's a pass or not. And so it's part of the photo, but it's not the big picture.

So that type of education is part of the, the challenges that we're, we're encountering. And so in terms of the solutions, we, um, both for platform and for upson, put up blog posts showing the actual carbon intensities for all of the data centers. When someone spins up a new project on either service, they see the carbon intensity and they can see whether it's green or not, because not everyone's gonna know.

A greener data center is one that runs on electricity that is less than 100 grams CO2 equivalent per kilowatt hour. So we try to, you know, just accompany uh, our clients in that education role. You know, a lot of our, our, uh, viewers are developers or work on the technical side, and it, uh, what do you think this new innovation might mean to mean to them?

Because they're always looking for ways to be more energy efficient. Yeah, so I think most, uh, engineers that work in this space will think about code efficiency first, and that's great. We, we encourage that.

But what I would hope is, you know, that they come in and they become more curious about how a true carbon auditor approaches this. And to think more like a carbon auditor and maybe a bit less like an engineer, because this, the savings that we're seeing from the geolocation strategy can dwarf some of the, even the coding. So it, it, it's, it's been an interesting learning process.

Um, but what, what we can say, uh, for all those engineers out there and tech folks that are interested is we will be publishing our 2023 carbon audit soon. And we have seen not just a reduction in intensity of our carbon emissions over profit, but an overall reduction in emissions while our electricity grew by a small amount. So we're seeing that this strategy is actually working, and I think that the, the tech folks out there will be interested to see these numbers.

Yeah, absolutely. That, that does sound interesting, and I'm be looking forward to publishing them here on eTech Insights as well. That that sounds great.

Um, I'm wondering also, let's take another area. When, when we're talking about digital transformation, everybody is wondering about, okay, we wanna be more energy efficient, we wanna reduce emissions, but of course, what is this gonna cost us? But it sounds like that platform message is very conscious of that and, and creating the balance that, um, it's also cost efficient, Right?

And so with upson, we're even encouraging people to, to, you know, save themselves money and go to these greener DA data centers. And that's part of that education component as well to, but, but the main thing is that whether you're running, uh, a web app, you know, in Germany or in Sweden or, you know, uh, on the west coast of the United States, or, you know, maybe in another data center that's higher, um, emissions, the amount of electricity that you use will be the same. So, you know, this is really the efficiency on the emission side, just using that geolocation strategy to, to be efficient there.

Yeah. And that's important for this new, there's a new law out of California looking at emissions and you know, the tech community is really starting to look at their full scope one, two, and three. That that's a great point.

I mean, we saw that in Europe already. Um, yeah. You know, more, uh, regulation and people trying to be compliant.

And then California, I'm sure it's a matter of time before the rest of the US falls suit. Yeah, I mean, I think California has been a trendsetter and nu number of regulation, you know, arenas. Yeah, that makes sense.

Um, let's talk more about you and your background, because I know that you're an experienced climate scientist as well, and I'm wondering how that that experience kind of shapes what you're doing now in sustainability for platform. Sh Yeah, it's definitely a driver. You know, we need to bend these curves quite quickly, and every, as the IPCC has said, every action counts, every fraction of a degree counts.

So reducing emissions overall is kind of a passion of mine as well as sharing why this is important and how to measure this correctly. I think there's a lot of, you know, good intentions out there, but you know, really basing, uh, the calculations and the final results and the science is very important. So anyone getting into this field, you know, I would just say work with your carbon auditor in Europe, they'll be soon, uh, sustainability auditors generally, you know, working on the corporate sustainability reporting directive, you know, it's, it's the two-way street.

We all need to talk to each other to better understand, uh, what is material, how to measure, uh, things correctly, and it's gonna be part of the process. Yeah, I think that's a, that's a huge, uh, issue, you know, everyone talking together and, uh, being on the same page and communicating. Um, so when, when companies are considering to integrate sustainability into their core strategies, yeah, yeah.

How, how would you measure how, like, I we're talking about this, this feature with platform sh but what overall core strategies do you think, uh, an organization needs to consider when saying, okay, we're gonna be more sustainable? Yeah, so I would say that I would be clear on whether you're gonna focus on the environmental component and having an environmental strategy, or you want a sustainability strategy, because the sustainability strategy is so much broader. You know, it takes into, uh, account that people component, you know, how, how you're interacting with your staff, how you're interacting with your community, and, um, there are a lot of new frameworks out there that are there to help businesses measure that.

And so, um, an example of that would be EcoVadis, which is a private initiative. And, you know, really requires businesses to have a sustainability strategy with KPIs. And this is something we're seeing, uh, worldwide, you know, that sustainability has gone, uh, beyond, um, you know, just, uh, selling a product announcing, you know, that you are green or you know, you're making ev you know, initiatives in and not quantifying it.

So today, when we talk about a sustainability strategy, it's all about metrics. It's about measuring these over time, tracking them and reporting them and disclosing them. And that's going to be more and more, um, the trend that we're seeing as these international agreements come forward.

As the big companies and the big players like California start putting in these regulations, people are gonna need, everyone will start to need to disclose that using the same metrics. Uh, Leah, you mentioned the educational efforts needed to get the messaging out, and I know you're familiar with the Green Software Foundation. Can you talk a little bit about that and how this, uh, organization comes together to kind of get this messaging out and anything else that you'd like to bring up on that topic?

Yeah, so that's something, you know, oh, um, that the cloud has facilitated. And so having discussions on whether it's the green, uh, software and foundation, slack channel or others, that it's just such a great platform to bring people together for these sustainability discussions. And they're able to structure those into the, you know, individual thread.

So if you're interested in infrastructure, you can talk Yeah. On an infrastructure thread, if you're interested in talking about carbon calculations, you can have those discussions there. And then more and more that we have on this, the more and more, um, awareness we'll have, uh, comparison of Brett's practices and I think education around these sustainability metrics, Right?

What do you anticipate in the green tech industry? What are some of the general trends you see that are coming? What are the exciting components?

Uh, is the, you know, the drop in price of renewable energies? So I think, you know, we, the tech community has always been a leader in this area, financing of these power purchase agreements or renewable energy certificates. So I think, you know, we're seeing the fruits of all of that, um, investment paying off now.

And as you know, energy becomes cheaper and cheaper. That's gonna have a profound impact on the, the tech community overall. Um, I think in terms of the evolution as, um, sustainability disclosures become more standardized and public companies will start to compare, uh, their results with one another.

And we'll have this, you know, group, group effect, you know, of other companies nudging other ones towards better be, you know, better performance. And I hope that we're going to see more and more that, uh, green Ops and finops go together, that the more optimization that happens in the cloud, the better the bottom line, you know, it's better for the planet and we all learn, uh, as part of the process. I agree.

Uh, and just for our final question, uh, Leah, if you could just sort of recap what you're doing at Platform sh um, with this new in initiative and the, uh, greener region discount, it'd be great. We just wanna kind of recap it and maybe where people can get more information on it. Very excited about this new offering.

UPS Sun, um, with this greener region discounts on resources. We have several data centers around the world that offer this discount. So we have an Azure Center in the Pacific Northwest in the us We have another one in Quebec that's AWS and then we have, you know, several in Europe, whether it's in Zurich, Sweden or in France.

So we have a lot of different offers now out there, and our clients can pick where they would like to be in terms of greener data centers. All of these data centers that I mentioned are also available on platform SH so I think we're gonna see maybe some clients that are just new to this journey, just shy signing up for, uh, you know, 3% discount. com or Platform assist h that's just the URL there.

We have blogs there that show everyone the, um, the, the methodology that we're using. We will be sending out carbon footprints to all of our clients for 2023, uh, in the coming weeks. And we have an FAQ page that will accompany that.

As people I think, start receiving this information and these disclosures, they're going to become more curious and start to learn more about it. That sounds great. Leah Goldfarb, environmental Impact Officer at Platforms, it's been a pleasure to speak with you, and I really appreciate your insights today.

Always a pleasure to speak with you, Bonnie. Thanks. Great.

Well stay with us on Techstrong tv. We're going to have more great interviews like this one coming up.