This article is part of the Sustainability Letter. Subscribe to receive more content on sustainability at the University of Luxembourg.
Can you introduce yourself for our readers who don’t know you?
My name is Benoit Ries, I’m Research Scientist at the University of Luxembourg in the Department of Computer Science and I’m mainly specialised in software engineering research area and, recently, I launched a Green IT lecture .
For how long have you been at the University of Luxembourg?
22 years, so even older than the University.
How was computer science 22 years ago?
That’s a very good question. I think a first big gap was mainly when I did my study, in the mid-90s. There was a lot of things like the raise of Internet. Recently, it has changed dramatically with the advent of artificial intelligence. That has changed a lot the game in terms of research and teaching. That’s the big differences I would say.
So, you’ve launched the Green IT class, could you explain what is Green IT?
It’s all that is referring to sustainability of IT in general. Meaning software, hardware, hardware devices, servers or hosting and network and everything that is related to IT. So, it’s very large, it covers a lot of different aspects. It’s about measuring how much impact IT has on the sustainability of our Society.
You started studying IT in the 90s, as you mentioned. Were you already aware of sustainability or is it something that came to your mind later? And when did the connection with your work arrive?
Personally, it was in my childhood. My parents were a lot into environmental issues, so I grew up in this context, being aware of all these. That was really what constructed me. I was also very much into science and into computer science and at some point, very early, in my teenage time, I decided to do computer science. But, in computer science, in my engineering school, we never talked about sustainability! We talked about performance, optimisation, things like that, but we never really connected all these with impact on the environment or on the sustainability of our Society. It’s like 20 years now that I do research on software engineering and it’s true that I always had this problem of matching those two sides. I’m doing computer science so “I’m polluting” somehow because I’m creating hardware and having an impact, and none of my research addressed that. I really wanted to start getting more details on what the real impact of computer science is, and, we’ll see that maybe a little later, what is the positive impact of computer science on sustainability and on how to reach the sustainable development goals with computer science. Thanks to Professor Nicolas Guelfi, head of the SAGE team, I had the opportunity to launch a new research direction and I took advantage of this opportunity to set up this lecture and combine my interest into environment and my work.
When you have this idea of introducing a new class, you don’t do this choice alone. How did it happen?
I wanted to develop my teaching, but I didn’t have a clear topic in mind initially. Prof. Guelfi offered me the freedom to choose the topic that I wish to focus on. And then I really got back to why am I doing this? What would make sense for me? What would be the impact? And that’s how I proposed this lecture. I started benchmarking classes in other universities. And then when I started to do the lecture and the syllabus, I talked with the director of the study of the Master in Computer Science , Ulrich Siegel and Pierre Kelsen, and they were directly supporting me because they also have environmental concerns. I had support from the beginning on this and every colleague congratulated me, because it’s kind of a sensitive topic and it’s not so easy to address.
Now if we go a bit more into details into the course. What do you propose in this class?
First I want to introduce and raise awareness of the students that there are two aspects on the subject. “Green IT”, it’s how IT is impacting sustainability, and “IT for Green”, that’s how we call it usually, is how IT helps giving solutions to sustainable problems. These two sides are important. Maybe I can give you some data. There’s one report that is quite recent where it says that the IT is 10 times more efficient in terms of CO2 reduction than the amount it produces. It means that by using IT we’ll have an impact, of course , around 2% of the global carbon footprint, but IT can also help reducing global carbon footprint by 20%. There’s a ratio of 10 roughly. So that’s amazing. It’s important to be aware of that. That’s really the main thing that all of my students must be aware of, we have somehow negative impacts, but we also have positive impacts, either. So that’s all about the balance.
Then the content of the class, as I said before, I am in the domain of software engineering, so I’m mainly focusing on it. We have some practical class where we look at two types of applications, which are the main applications that are available to everyone, which are web applications, and artificial intelligence related applications. These two types of applications we have some practical works where we measure the impact in terms of carbon footprint and the power consumption of a click on a website for example or of a request on the Chat GPT-like application and to have concrete values. So one important aspect of the lecture is to really give these tools, how to evaluate, how to assess.
And for instance, how do you evaluate click on Chat GPT?
I would say I’m in favour of having more transparency, so it’s clear that when we use a service like chat GPT, it’s mostly free and is easily accessible and no one has any idea of what it has as consequences. There should be some transparency in all services and of course we cannot impose anything on other companies, so that’s why our students have these computer tools, to evaluate, assess, to have critical point of view on how much energy does it consume and where is this energy produced? That’s the two aspects that are important in terms of software. So how much do you consume and where do you consume the energy. If you have something like a web application, it needs to be known where it’s hosted, because that’s where the most power is going to be used, the hosting of the server. If the server is hosted in a country which has high cost in terms of carbon footprint, then it’s going to be a terrible impact. Even if you use this website from Luxembourg, you still have the impact, because you clicked, the web server is located somewhere. It’s costly in terms of impact on the environment and that’s what we try to really address and raise awareness about. We have some tools for that. That’s the practical work. And then, one of the big parts of the lecture will be an individual project where the student will choose which area, he or she would like to do an application, targeting a specific SDG.
After one semester, how do you feel about this class? Were the students receptive to this? Any good feedbacks?
The first impression is that, even though this lecture was optional, we had 15 students, which is a clear success. I don’t know the exact number, but in terms of an optional lecture, I had information that it was quite very positive for a first session. The positive aspect of being optional class, is that all student who came were all interested in the topic. I’m quite confident that there may be even more students next semester.
How do you see IT evolving? What would be ideal for you? What do you think is important?
I would say I am fundamentally optimistic. I believe the change is already there. Legally, there’s a lot of things that are in place and being set up now to enforce companies, even if they don’t want to, they must do it. They must comply, and I think it will come from there, and it will come naturally. There will be some obligations on reducing impact of IT in the same way that cars are consuming less and less petrol, because petrol is getting rarer. It’s going to be the same.
So we will have some constraints that is imposed directly on the companies, offering their services, computer services more than on the actual individuals, so we might not see really much what will be in the background, but I’m quite sure it will run smoothly and I think there’s a lot also to do on this hosting and server and data centres, and I had a number I would like to say, because it’s a very strong number.
In 2024, the consumption of electricity for data centre in the world is around 300 terawatts/hr. This number doesn’t mean anything for anyone. Let’s have a look at the total annual consumption of Luxembourg, it’s around 6 terawatts/hr. One year of data centre consumption represents 50 years of total electricity consumption in Luxembourg, including the industrial sector. That’s one aspect where we will need to have bigger impact.
We are talking a lot about refreshing them, the energy consumption. The energy need will reduce but in the end it’s still raw materials that are used.
That’s clear. I’m doing some shortcut. But it’s clear we must reduce our needs. But let’s try to be realistic. There’s nothing done right now to reduce it. Everything is done to be connected like more and more. Most is done to consume more. We need to reduce the need for data centres, but the fact is that they are there, and they consume. To have an impact we may have to make it more costly. I mean that’s what happens with the car and transportation. It’s more costly to put petrol or whatever and then some people will start to drive less. I mean with the high rise, there are some people who clearly say “No, this is too much, I’m not going there by car. I’m not going there at all.” Just because it’s too costly.
Let’s go back to IT for Green. How could IT impact agriculture?
You need to do a full life cycle analysis. For instance, you can have a look at the water consumption. You can have some drones that have a clear map of what needs to be watered, must not need not to be watered. And you only put the amount of water that is necessary, so you don’t have a waste of natural fresh water. The same would apply for treatment, even though we encourage organic, treatment can be applied specific areas.
At the University of Luxembourg, do you think Green IT should be a mandatory class?
There are some techniques that we use that are not used at first year level, but of course I would be very happy to disseminate this lecture to other programs and other faculties that are not computer science faculties and to have an introductory lecture on what is green IT, what is the impact.
We all use computer, not only computer scientists.
Exactly. Yes. So that’s clearly something that we would like to see evolve.
Do you already have changes planned for next year in terms of content, of the way you are doing the class.
I would like to adapt it to different background. Geography or any other background of the University. In term of content, because this lecture is on the 3rd semester of Master, with students that are going to be engineers in less than a year, having some partnership with industries in Luxembourg would be very interesting. Cryptocurrencies are also very trendy and may be part of our everyday lives shortly. But what is the impact of these new digital currencies ? That would be interesting to include it in the next lecture sessions.
Are there any instructions, any applicable steps that everyone can take in their everyday lives? What are your hints for some non-specialists to be greener in IT?
There are like hundreds of tips that I could give. But two most important one that now comes into my mind are one in hardware and one in software.
Hardware has a very high cost on the environment. Any new hardware has directly an impact. My first tip is, when you want to renew a hardware, think about whether you really need it, and does it make any difference if you wait one more year. Just to wait one more year has a big impact. So that sounds much achievable to think about it in this way.
Secondly, which we talked a little bit already, is that you should think when you do a search on something like ChatGPT. Is it necessary? Of course, ChatGPT is helpful in a number of ways. It can be used in a very important or impacting way, but it can also be used to generate some futile images. So just think about it. Think about the importance of what you do. That would be two small tips.