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Adds climate commitments episode
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aturner-epcc committed Jan 7, 2025
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Expand Up @@ -26,7 +26,7 @@ The terms "net zero", "carbon neutral", "carbon negative" and "climate neutral"

There are many ways to reduce emissions but it's important to understand the exact mechanism of the reduction when thinking about reduction targets.

![alt_text](./images/24_carbon_reduction.png "image_tooltip")
![alt_text](./fig/24_carbon_reduction.png "image_tooltip")

### Abatement / Carbon Elimination

Expand Down Expand Up @@ -85,7 +85,7 @@ A short-term carbon removal project will only remove carbon for 100 years, after

There are many different climate reduction strategies that an organization can commit to, from carbon neutral to net zero. Understanding the different meanings and implications of each one can help you decide on the right strategy for your organization.

![alt_text](./images/25_climate_commitments.png "image_tooltip")
![alt_text](./fig/25_climate_commitments.png "image_tooltip")

### Carbon Neutral

Expand Down Expand Up @@ -121,16 +121,14 @@ When organizations set a target of 100% renewable power, they might distinguish

**Powered by** means you are directly powered by a renewable power source, say a hydro dam. In that scenario, the energy the device receives only originates from that source, so you can confidently say that you are 100% powered by renewables.

![alt_text](./images/26-27_100_renewable.png "image_tooltip")
![alt_text](./fig/26-27_100_renewable.png "image_tooltip")

For most people, we live on an interconnected grid, with many producers pumping electricity in and many consumers taking electricity out. This means the electrons coming into your device are a mixture of all the electrons going into the grid. For example, suppose the grid only has 5% of wind supply. You are getting 5% of wind-generated electrons and 95% fossil fuel-generated electrons.

You can't track individual electrons. Once the electrons from a wind farm are on a grid, they all mix with the electrons from a fossil fuel plant. So there is no way for a consumer to insist the electrons that it uses only come from renewable sources.

#### Renewable Energy Certificates (REC)

<!-- ![alt_text](images/image26.png "image_tooltip") -->

To solve this problem, a renewable plant sells two things. The first is its electricity, which it sells into a grid. The second is a REC, a [Renewable Energy Certificates](https://www.epa.gov/green-power-markets/renewable-energy-certificates-recs). 1 REC equals 1kWh of energy.

If you want to be 100% matched by renewable energy and are on the grid, the solution is to buy enough RECs to cover the amount of electricity you consume. For instance, if you consume 100 kWh of electricity every day, then to be 100% matched by renewables, you buy 100 RECs.
Expand All @@ -153,17 +151,17 @@ When it comes to 100% renewable claims, the critical question is, what is the gr

#### Daily vs hourly matching

![alt_text](./images/28_daily_vs_hourly.png "image_tooltip")
![alt_text](./fig/28_daily_vs_hourly.png "image_tooltip")

Imagine an organization has a demand curve like this, each blue square represents 1kWh:

![alt_text](./images/29_daily_consumption.png "image_tooltip")
![alt_text](./fig/29_daily_consumption.png "image_tooltip")

They have purchased RECs from a wind farm that generated electricity with a curve, so each green square represents 1 REC. Matching by day means the organization consumed 18 kWh and bought 18 RECs. As a result, they netted off to zero. So they can say they are **100% matched by renewable energy daily.**

However, if we looked at it in hourly buckets (each square here is 2 hrs in length), then it seems a bit different:

![alt_text](./images/30_hourly_match.png "image_tooltip")
![alt_text](./fig/30_hourly_match.png "image_tooltip")

The total amount of energy consumed is still 18kWh. However, there are only a few hours in the day where we are 100% matched by renewable energy for that hour. So for some hours, we have way more renewable energy than we need. Conversely, we have way less renewable energy than we require for most hours.

Expand All @@ -183,9 +181,9 @@ Carbon aware computing involves responding to electrical carbon intensity signal

One example of a behavior change is shifting compute to a time when more renewable energy is available. For example, delaying the start of a training run of a machine learning model, or even delaying charging of a laptop, to when the carbon intensity of electricity is lower, and the supply of renewable energy is higher.

![alt_text](./images/31_carbon_awareness.png "image_tooltip")
![alt_text](./fig/31_carbon_awareness.png "image_tooltip")

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Carbon aware computing helps organizations increase their CFE percentage.
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