Sustainable IT newsletter #1

As you may know, I'm studying sustainable IT with a focus on development. I have found many interesting articles and news, and I think it would be a pity to keep them to myself. So I'm going to share some interesting publications (recent or not) on a regular basis. Tell me if you like it and what kind of topic you'd like to see more of.

Rights to repair🔗

In March, the Commission published a proposal to regulate and promote repair rights. This is a step in the right direction, as it will help extend the life of terminals and other devices whose manufacture has the greatest impact on the environment.

However, as Right to Repair Europe discusses, there are still many aspects to frame, such as affordability or anti-repair practices.

Ecolog🔗

On March 23, the French Sustainable IT Institute published a new guide on guidelines for the design and construction of training courses on the subject: Ecolog.

This first version, in French, gives you a typology either by domain or by job. For each domain, several training objectives are listed, explained, linked to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and accompanied by some references. For each job, this is the same, except that there is a link to the handbook of sustainable design of digital services (GR491) or the [AFNOR SPEC 2201] (https://www.boutique.afnor.org/en-gb/standard/afnor-spec-2201//fa203506/323315) (AFNOR is the French standards body).

If you'd like to teach yourself, Ecolog can definitely help you find and study which materials to look for and study.

Digital heating system🔗

Since the data center must be cooled, the heat is wasted energy. There are projects that are inspired by cogeneration to not waste the heat.

I've found 2 such projects in the news. The first one is developed by a Belgian company: Levv heat. It was presented during the Brussels Digital Spring at the end of March. The other one is developed by the British company Deep Green. The system is connected to the heating system of swimming pools.

Analysis of the methodological gap between existing studies🔗

On April 3, ARCEP, a French regulatory authority, published its analysis of the differences in the methodologies used in studies on the environmental impact of digitalization.

They have identified several reasons, such as the lack of data or their poor quality, the poor or absent referencing of the works used, or a low use of the ITU reference in this matter. They also make several suggestions.

Some recente releases🔗

Here are some recent releases of tools.

The French collective GreenIT.fr presented the result of the refactoring of their Ecoindex toolkit (in French, see also the recorded presentation). Among other things, they updated all the tools with the latest version of the handbook on sustainable design of digital services (see above). There is also a badge and a browser extension. Among the tools, there is a CLI tool that can analyze locally websites. It can generate html report, for instance in a CI.

Another French collective, ecoCode, has announced version 1.0 of its tools: ecoCode and ecoCode mobile. Both are SonarQube plugins. The first is for Java, Javascript, PHP and Python, the second for Android and iOS.

If you have any comment, question, or feedback, please share them with me.

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