I work in an IoT startup that is upgrading commercial HVAC to support smarter energy management. It's shockingly easy to save 10-20, sometimes up to 50% energy just by scheduling and occupancy-based control. All these huge, empty, cold rooms in the malls and office buildings are wasting a lot. Commercial buildings are contributing up to 40% of all greenhouse emissions, so if we reduce that by 20%, that's already a 8% global win. It is software + hardware though.
Ask HN: Can software engineering help combat climate change?
31–40 of 49 posts
Re: Ask HN: Can software engineering help combat climate change?
#32I work in an IoT startup that is upgrading commercial HVAC to support smarter energy management. It's shockingly easy to save 10-20, sometimes up to 50% energy just by scheduling and occupancy-based control. All these huge, empty, cold rooms in the malls and office buildings are wasting a lot. Commercial buildings are contributing up to 40% of all greenhouse emissions, so if we reduce that by 20%, that's already a 8%…
> Commercial buildings are contributing up to 40% of all greenhouse emissions
Is this a number you can reliably back?
(The hard 40% part, "up to 40%" includes "only 5%" of course)
At face value it doesn't appear to mesh with, for example:
https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis...
Re: Ask HN: Can software engineering help combat climate change?
#33I work in an IoT startup that is upgrading commercial HVAC to support smarter energy management. It's shockingly easy to save 10-20, sometimes up to 50% energy just by scheduling and occupancy-based control. All these huge, empty, cold rooms in the malls and office buildings are wasting a lot. Commercial buildings are contributing up to 40% of all greenhouse emissions, so if we reduce that by 20%, that's already a 8%…
> Commercial buildings are contributing up to 40% of all greenhouse emissions Is this a number you can reliably back? (The hard 40% part, "up to 40%" includes "only 5%" of course) At face value it doesn't appear to mesh with, for example: https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis...
I'm also always struggling with a correct way to formulate this number. Most reports will cite IEA report which says something like "construction and operation of buildings are responsible for 38% of global emissions" (note "construction"). This number is usually the one you'll see during ESG presentations.
Re: Ask HN: Can software engineering help combat climate change?
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Commercial buildings are contributing up to 40% of all greenhouse emissions Is this a number you can reliably back? (The hard 40% part, "up to 40%" includes "only 5%" of course) At face value it doesn't appear to mesh with, for example: https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis...
I'm also always struggling with a correct way to formulate this number. Most reports will cite IEA report which says something like "construction and operation of buildings are responsible for 38% of global emissions" (note "construction"). This number is usually the one you'll see during ESG presentations.
Also "of buildings" not simply "commercial buildings".
Either way, the implication that operation (ie day to day running) of commercial buildings in the US might make up the order of 40% of global C02 emissions seems a stretch.
FWiW I'm all for aggressively cutting back total global greenhouse emissions and have been since the 1970s (I've worked for decades in Energy | Minerals geophysical mapping and exploration and assisted developing world scale GIS mapping systems since the late 1980s (about a decade prior to Google maps IIRC)) and that's going to take some hard to swing lifestyle changes by the larger per capita emmitters, buuut that's also going to take some realistic lining up of priorities and reative emissions.
That aside, good to see changes being made in the commercial running costs domain .. all moves to shift the needle downwards are good.
Re: Ask HN: Can software engineering help combat climate change?
#35The most impactful thing is to Stop Doing Things.
This does not mean nihilism or acceptance of the status quo, it just means that we cannot produce our way out of this mess.
I am typing this after staying up all night in a suburban area by an arterial road -- the world is beautifully quiet at 3:00AM. The magic didn't last long, because a mere hour later I started hearing whispers of a waking world. It's now 4:30AM and there's a steadily increasing whoosh of tires and a growing cacophony of revving engines. All these people are rapidly going somewhere, but why? Is it really necessary?
The answer is not more EVs or more bike lanes or whatever, but rather less of everything aka degrowth.
Stop Doing Things and encourage others to adopt this mindset as well.
Re: Ask HN: Can software engineering help combat climate change?
#36No. It's lipstick on a pig, it's a way of feeling important while making no difference. The way you combat climate change is by reducing carbon dioxide output and increasing biomass creation and therefore uptake and sinking. You can't write code that does that. Adding complexity to everything is what software developers do best, only the most skilled ones manage to reduce complexity, and adding complexity to this sit…
Well you could be efficient with your code so it doesn't waste CPU cycles, since CPU cycles == Energy, and if your algorithms use less energy, in all likelihood you'll emit less CO2. Specially if they're widely deployed.
The best way to save CPU cycles is to not write or deploy that code at all
Re: Ask HN: Can software engineering help combat climate change?
#37No. It's lipstick on a pig, it's a way of feeling important while making no difference. The way you combat climate change is by reducing carbon dioxide output and increasing biomass creation and therefore uptake and sinking. You can't write code that does that. Adding complexity to everything is what software developers do best, only the most skilled ones manage to reduce complexity, and adding complexity to this sit…
There are some endeavours I feel that could have an impact, but it's always a clever protocol in combination with the right hardware, like solar-powered mesh-networks or just solar-powered servers with 24h availability due to mirrors on the other side of the planet [0].
[0] https://www.dezeen.com/2022/09/27/solar-protocol-network-exp...
Edit: What I want to say is, that the good that is possible is mostly small tech, not big tech.
Re: Ask HN: Can software engineering help combat climate change?
#38The most immediate - yet mostly overlooked - positive impact software and software engineering has on combating climate change is anything that enables remote work or that does away with pointless busywork through automation.
It never ceases to amaze that hardly anyone seems to even want to talk about the daily commute as one of the main reasons for climate change.
Ultimately, it doesn't matter if you're using an EV, a combustion engine, or even public transport to get to office every day. Not having to commute at all is what can make a difference, though.
Re: Ask HN: Can software engineering help combat climate change?
#39The most impactful thing is to Stop Doing Things. This does not mean nihilism or acceptance of the status quo, it just means that we cannot produce our way out of this mess. I am typing this after staying up all night in a suburban area by an arterial road -- the world is beautifully quiet at 3:00AM. The magic didn't last long, because a mere hour later I started hearing whispers of a waking world. It's now 4:30AM an…
"Degrowth" aka "Malthusianism 2.0" is a synonym for depopulation and / or decreased standard of living.
Even the current number of humans alive - let alone people yet to be born - can't be maintained without continued growth, innovation, and the paradigm shifts resulting from that innovation and growth.
Anyone trying to make the argument for degrowth therefore ultimately has to decide which humans deserve to be born or who gets to have a standard of living comparable to the one common in developed economies today.
Re: Ask HN: Can software engineering help combat climate change?
#40The most impactful thing is to Stop Doing Things. This does not mean nihilism or acceptance of the status quo, it just means that we cannot produce our way out of this mess. I am typing this after staying up all night in a suburban area by an arterial road -- the world is beautifully quiet at 3:00AM. The magic didn't last long, because a mere hour later I started hearing whispers of a waking world. It's now 4:30AM an…
"Degrowth" aka "Malthusianism 2.0" is a synonym for depopulation and / or decreased standard of living. Even the current number of humans alive - let alone people yet to be born - can't be maintained without continued growth, innovation, and the paradigm shifts resulting from that innovation and growth. Anyone trying to make the argument for degrowth therefore ultimately has to decide which humans deserve to be born…
Degrowth is about structuring the economy to meet the needs of humans instead of the needs of spreadsheets. Our current economic motivation can be best described as 'line go up' where we make an enormous pile of shiny stuff but kill everyone in the process.
Supporting the status quo is itself a firm and irreversible decision about the fate of current and future humans: there is no place for them on dead planet, and corpses have no "standard of living" at all.