Open source blockchain solution launched for carbon-aware decentralised computing
Image: 123RF
Energy Web, WattTime, and Green Software Foundation have unveiled the open source ‘Carbon-Aware Nomination’ to green decentralised computing.
Carbon-Aware Nomination, named a first of its kind, is aimed to schedule computational tasks based on the electricity carbon intensity, shifting them to run at times and locations where the intensity is lowest.
Based on Energy Web’s decentralised computing platform with environmental tech nonprofit WattTime’s real-time grid emissions data and the Green Software Foundations’s Carbon-Aware SDK, the solution is designed to allow a batch job or flexible workload to automatically ‘chase’ the lowest carbon energy available.
For example, instead of running immediately the task could be executed to run at night in a region with abundant wind energy, with the process orchestrated and verified on the Energy Web X blockchain with proof of the associated carbon emissions.
Have you read?
GE Vernova partners with AWS on data centre scaling and grid reliability
The good, the bad and the safety: AI and data in the energy sector
“Our community has been looking for ways to cut IT emissions without sacrificing performance or trust. Carbon-Aware Nomination delivers that by leveraging decentralisation,” said Mani Hagh Sefat, CTO of Energy Web.
“We’re injecting the best real-time data into an open, trustless network of computing resources. The result is a game-changer – any organisation can now ensure its workloads run with the lowest possible carbon impact, and they can prove it.”
The growth in data centres with the fast accelerating use of AI and GenAI with its growing energy consumption is increasingly in the spotlight.
Currently data centres are estimated by the IEA to account for around 1% of global electricity consumption and up to 4% in large economies including the US, Europe and China and even more in specific locations due the tendency to ‘cluster’.
Growth projections vary and are typically in the range of a doubling to tripling by 2030, with some probable offsetting from the increasing efficiencies of data processing and storage.
While many data centres have turned to renewables for power and strategies such as demand side response, the Carbon-Aware Nomination solution offers a more widely available approach to the challenge of their decarbonisation.
Gavin McCormick, WattTime co-founder and executive director, says that the partnership demonstrates how data and technology can come together to fight climate change in new domains.
“We’re thrilled to see automated emissions reduction principles expanding into cloud and blockchain infrastructure. By giving organisations the power to run tasks when renewables are abundant, Carbon-Aware Nomination turns climate intention into action.”
Asim Hussain, executive director of Green Software Foundation, adds that its mission is to reduce the environmental impact of software.
“By working with Energy Web and WattTime, we’re proving that sustainability can be a core part of modern computing – measurable, verifiable and open source.”
Documentation and developer tools for Carbon-Aware Nomination are provided by Energy Web so that companies and developers can integrate it into cloud workflows, decentralised applications or scheduling software to begin reducing the carbon emissions of their operations.
Energy Web, WattTime and the Green Software Foundation also plan to engage cloud providers, enterprises and researchers in adopting the approach and they invite interested partners to join the initiative and contribute to the open-source codebase.
