Hi all,
Thanks Lukas for bringing this back up. Since my name was mentioned, I'll
share some context, but I'm copying my colleague Juliet Barbara who is best
positioned to move this forward, as she is the current holder of our
relationship with Greenpeace.
The Comms, Finance, and COO teams met with Greenpeace in 2015 to discuss
the ways the WMF could improve our overall environmental footprint. The
Foundation already has some positive efforts underway formally and
informally - IIRC, we included clean energy consumption as a factor in
evaluating in our RFC for our choice of a backup colo a few years back, we
are transparent (if not overly proactive) in disclosure of energy
consumption, we have sensible policies around server efficiency and
hardware replacement, and we have pushed for clean energy alternatives for
our SF office consumption.
We are less effective in areas such as advocacy and purchasing (e.g.,
stating this is a priority for the movement, pushing our colos to provide
clean sources/mixes). Some of these are questions of scale and efficiency -
Ops runs a tight ship, and we're a relatively small footprint in our colos,
so we don't necessarily have the ability to drive purchasing decisions
based on scale alone.
At the time the report came out, we started talking to Lukas about how we
could improve our efforts at the WMF and across the movement, but we've had
limited bandwidth to move this forward in the Foundation (and some
transitions in our Finance and Operations leadership, who were acting as
executive sponsors). However, I think it's safe to say that we'd like to
continue to reduce our environmental impact, and look forward to the
findings of this effort.
Katherine
On Wed, Mar 30, 2016 at 8:17 AM, Lukas Mezger <lukas.mezger(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
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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--
Katherine Maher
Wikimedia Foundation
149 New Montgomery Street
San Francisco, CA 94105
+1 (415) 839-6885 ext. 6635
+1 (415) 712 4873
kmaher(a)wikimedia.org