PyData London 2023

Green software - building sustainable Python data analytics
06-03, 11:45–12:25 (Europe/London), Minories

Were you aware that the cloud infrastructure powering modern computing has a larger greenhouse gas footprint than commercial aviation? This talk is aimed at developers and data scientists who are concerned about the impact of their work on the environment and want to explore practical solutions to address this challenge. We will explain how greenhouse gas emissions are categorized and estimated for computing. We will also introduce approaches to developing more sustainable software and provide practical examples using Python data analytics.


You may have spotted that your cloud provider now provides a greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions report alongside your billing statements. Current research suggests that the infrastructure and devices that power modern computing could account for as much as 3.9% of global GHG emissions - a bigger footprint than commercial aviation! With the increasing use and complexity of algorithms this is only going to grow.

In this talk, we will describe how greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) are categorized and how they are estimated for computing; summarize the work being done by industry initiatives on sustainable software development, and provide some worked examples using Python data analytics.

This talk will assume no prior knowledge of sustainable computing or climate science and is aimed at any developers and data scientists who are concerned about the impact of their work on the environment and want to explore practical solutions to address this challenge. The Python examples used will be basic and should be accessible to all attendees. After attending the talk, the audience will understand how compute and data analytics contributes to global GHG emissions and be introduced to the key concepts of sustainable computing and the tools and techniques that can be employed.


Prior Knowledge Expected

No previous knowledge expected

Mark is the VP of software engineering at Risilience, a Cambridge based start-up that provides an analytics and SaaS platform for corporate businesses to assess their climate change risks. His interests and experience are in the application of modern data analysis techniques and frameworks to risk analytics and the benefits of running these analytics in the cloud. For fun, Mark surfs the Cornish coast as often as possible and tries to keep up with his two young children.