Byte-sized green computing

The environmental impact of computing is an increasingly important and recognised issue: growing demand for digital services, data storage, high-performance computing and Artifical Intelligence (AI) brings greater resource use (energy, water, metals, etc.) and associated impacts such as greenhouse gas emissions.

Although public awareness is growing, and active work is done by research institutions in implementing sustainability into their policy, at an individual level it can often be difficult to translate this problem into smaller, practical actions that we can take in our day-to-day work.

This series of “byte-sized” training events will offer four tailored sessions focused on practical actions that participants can implement in their work to monitor, minimise and report its environmental impact. 

• Green continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD)
• Metrics for monitoring software emissions efficiency
• CATS: the Climate Aware Task Scheduler
• nf-co2footprint: estimating the carbon footprint of Nextflow pipelines

All sessions will run independently, and consist of an introductory lecture followed by hands-on tutorial. The introductory lecture will be recorded, and repurposed on-demand on the EMBL-EBI Training website.

We recommend watching the “The environmental impacts of scientific computing” webinar prior to the event(s), as it provides a general introduction to sustainable computing and helps placing the sessions into context.

For more details on the programme and how to register, browse to the “Programme” and “How to apply” tabs. 

Funders
The organisation of this event is supported by Wellcome Trust (Green Algorithms Initiative), the University of Cambridge, NetDRIVE and the STEP-UP project.

Who is this course for?

This course is suitable for: 

• Anyone interested in sustainable software, green computing, and reducing the environmental impact of technology. 
• Anyone who wants to make more informed and sustainable choices about how they use computing resources. 
• Anyone who conducts computationally intensive research or works with large datasets, simulations, AI, or high-performance computing. 
• Anyone who develops, manages, supports, or relies on software, digital technologies, data, or research computing infrastructure. 

Learning outcomes

At the end of this course you will be able to:

• Explain the principles of Green Computing and identify ways to reduce the environmental impact of software and IT infrastructure.
• Apply sustainable practices in CI/CD pipelines to measure, monitor, and reduce the environmental impact of software delivery.
• Calculate and interpret Software Carbon Intensity (SCI) to assess the carbon impact of software systems and identify areas for improvement.
• Apply carbon-aware approaches such as CATS to incorporate carbon considerations. 
• Configure GitHub Actions CI/CD workflows using best practices that minimise unnecessary computational and environmental costs.

Trainers

Each event will run independently, and interested participants will have to register for each event they would like to attend.

Registration is free but limited, and places will be assigned on a first come, first served basis. Follow the “Register” button to access the registrations form.

Please note that the introductory lecture of each session will be recorded. During the recording, participants will be asked to keep their microphone and camera off. The Q&A and hands-on tutorial will not be recorded.

Please note that certificates of attendance will not be issued for the sessions.