Dear MZMcBride and Brion,
Thank you for your comments! Let me quickly respond to a few points.
– I have in fact already looked at previous conversations regarding the
environmental impact of the Wikimedia movement, but apparently they never
went anywhere. From my point of view, the topic leaves no room for
cynicism, looking at how easy it is to improve the current situation.
– In fact I would be grateful if you could point me to any information
about the WMF's energy use that I can understand.
– It is probably true that our absolute numbers might not be very large,
but I think we should still set an example by having the servers run on
renewable energy, by asking the board to make a strong renewable energy
commitment, and by adopting a green investment strategy for the Wikimedia
endowment.
– I have also been in a conversation with Greenpeace USA, so I can try to
answer any further questions regarding their report if needed. The report
is actually based on detailed figures that the WMF (in person of Katherin
Maher) shared with Greenpeace.
Thanks again,
Lukas / Gnom
2016-03-30 16:30 GMT+02:00 Brion Vibber <bvibber(a)wikimedia.org>rg>:
On Wed, Mar 30, 2016 at 12:27 AM, Lukas Mezger
<lukas.mezger(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Dear readers of the Wikitech mailing list,
I am a member of the Wikipedia community and I have started a project to
reduce the environmental impact of the Wikimedia movement
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact>. The main idea is
to
use renewable energy for running the Wikimedia servers and the main
reason
for this is that by doing so, Wikipedia can set a
great example for
environmental responsibility in the entire internet sector.
My project was started after Greenpeace USA published a report
<http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/global-warming/click-clean/> about the
energy consumption of the biggest sites on the Internet in 2015 and in
which Wikipedia, to my astonishment, performed poorly, receiving a "D"
score and only passing because of the Wikimedia Foundation's openness
about
its energy consumption.
I don't see *anything* about energy consumption or environmental impact in
their statistics there.
They do measure the relative balance of various energy sources, but that
means little... We could probably be burning big lumps of coal and have a
positive environmental impact if our relative energy consumption is much
lower than competing sites might have been, but that isn't measured in any
way.
They also measure some sort of "commitment" and "championship" of
specific
energy sources, which sounds nice but doesn't in any way measure energy
usage or environmental impact.
I would very much like to change that and set up a page called
"Environmental
impact <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact>" on Meta.
I
have already discussed the issue with a few
people both from the
Wikimedia
Foundation's management and from the
Wikimedia community and have
received
positive responses.
Neat!
-- brion
In order to further advance the project, I would like to learn more about
how much energy Wikipedia's servers use. As far as I can tell, these
figures are not public, but I believe they could very well be.
Also, I am interested to learn how changing a server site's energy
sources
can be carried out on the operations side since
the United States energy
sector hasn't been completely deregulated yet.
So, thank you very much for any comments! Maybe there also is an even
better forum to discuss these questions?
Finally, if you would like to support my project, please consider adding
your name to this list
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact#Show_your_support
.
Thank you.
Kind regards,
Lukas Mezger / User:Gnom <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Gnom>
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