Update advocating.md

content/toolkit/advocating.md

@@ -88,19 +88,19 @@ For example, try to work with your Procurement and IT departments to extend the
 
 ### Energy Procurement
 
-Green tariffs are not straightforward. They push the energy market in the right direction, but energy that comes from the grid is currently supplied by a mixture of renewable and non-renewable sources, whoever your energy supplier is. Multi-year power purchase agreements (PPAs) supporting renewable investment should be used. The safest way for your institution to really control its carbon footprint would be to generate all its energy on-site from renewable sources. Short of this ideal, an institution can generate some of its energy on-site, and develop battery storage, to help reduce power draw from the grid (especially when demand is high). Institutions can also explore better scheduling of energy intensive activities. 
+Green tariffs are not straightforward. They push the energy market in the right direction, but energy that comes from the grid is currently supplied by a mixture of renewable and non-renewable sources, whoever your energy supplier is. Multi-year power purchase agreements (PPAs) supporting renewable investment should be used. Also check out the 24/7 Carbon Free Energy Compact. The safest way for your institution to really control its carbon footprint would be to generate all its energy on-site from renewable sources. Short of this ideal, an institution can generate some of its energy on-site, and develop battery storage, to help reduce power draw from the grid (especially when demand is high). Institutions can also explore better scheduling of energy intensive activities. 
 
 ### Procurement Law
 
 At time of writing in late 2022, UK procurement law is [set to be reformed](https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3159), and there are opportunities to pressure legislators to ensure it is fit-for-purpose. The [response](https://www.ukupc.ac.uk/pdf/UKUPC_Green_Paper_Response.pdf) to the government's Green Paper by the UK Universities Purchasing Consortia noted that universities incorporate social value into tenders, but did not extensively thematise sustainability or decarbonisation. It is important that any new legislation give institutions the flexibility to prioritise sustainability in procurement decisions, and ideally that it requires procurement in alignment with climate commitments. 
 
 ## Question the Cloud
 
-For many of its users, the public cloud is invisible infrastructure, barely noticeable except when it breaks. [The Green Grid](https://www.thegreengrid.org/) is an industry consortium focused on data centre energy efficiency and sustainability, and a gateway to a variety of research and resources. Thoughtworks’s [Cloud Carbon Footprint](https://www.cloudcarbonfootprint.org/docs/overview) is a promising-looking open source project for estimating the carbon footprint of data centre usage. The [Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact](https://www.climateneutraldatacentre.net/) is a voluntary initiative in support of the European Green Deal.
+For many of its users, the public cloud is invisible infrastructure, barely noticeable except when it breaks. [The Green Grid](https://www.thegreengrid.org/) is an industry consortium focused on data centre energy efficiency and sustainability, and a gateway to a variety of research and resources. Thoughtworks’s [Cloud Carbon Footprint](https://www.cloudcarbonfootprint.org/docs/overview) is a promising-looking open source project for estimating the carbon footprint of data centre usage. The [Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact](https://www.climateneutraldatacentre.net/) is a voluntary initiative in support of the European Green Deal. [The GEC has produced some guidelines](https://globalelectronicscouncil.org/resources/purchaser-guides/sustainability-cloud-service-procurements/) for procurement teams to grill cloud providers.
 
-When a university or other institution procures data storage and computing power, this is an opportunity to improve our own environmental impact, and to incentivise much larger players to improve theirs. Currently public cloud services are dominated by Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. Hyperscale datacentres have clear potential to achieve greater sustainability through economies of scale.
+When a university or other institution procures data storage and computing power, this is an opportunity to improve our own environmental impact, and to incentivise much larger players to improve theirs. Currently public cloud services are dominated by Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. Hyperscale datacentres have clear potential to achieve greater sustainability through economies of scale. Furthermore, running a data centre or a server with a low utilisation is typically less efficient, since there is an "overhead" to having it switched on in the first place (better one data centre at 100% than two equivalent data centres at 50% each).
 
-At the same time, these also three companies deeply structurally and culturally committed to expanding the role of digital technology in everyday life, including the use of carbon intensive Machine Learning, whose green claims have been heavily dependent on carbon offsetting. In recent years, there has been something of a backlash against the public cloud as a sustainability panacea. See for example the Dark Matter Episode '[The Cloud Fugitive](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a30vFpSaoZg).' At least some large companies are bringing workloads that used to be done on the public cloud back onto their on-premise infrastructure.
+At the same time, these also three companies deeply structurally and culturally committed to expanding the role of digital technology in everyday life, including the use of carbon intensive Machine Learning, whose green claims have been heavily dependent on carbon offsetting. The three cloud giants have also been criticised for their lack of transparency: there is a lot going on in those data centres that we don't know about. In recent years, there has been something of a backlash against the public cloud as a sustainability panacea. See for example the Dark Matter Episode '[The Cloud Fugitive](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a30vFpSaoZg).' Some large companies are bringing workloads that used to be done on the public cloud back onto their on-premise infrastructure.
 
 Here are just a few questions that might help get the conversations started, both internally with procurement teams, and externally with potential suppliers.
 
@@ -110,15 +110,19 @@ Here are just a few questions that might help get the conversations started, bot
 | What are the broader ESG policies of the provider? | ESG = Environmental, Social, Governance. ESG has its drawbacks, since it is rooted in risk management. If a company has outward impacts which are damaging to the environment, but which are unlikely to pose the company any reputational or legal risk, then those impacts might not negatively impact their ESG ratings. |
 | What is the data centre's PUE, CUE, and WUE? | In areas where electricity is cheap, there may not be strong incentives to use it as effectively as possible. The Power Useage Efficiency metric is widely used in the data centre industry, to express how much of the total energy the data centre uses is used in its computational processes, rather than ancilliary processes such as cooling (1.0 would be a perfect score). It does have its limitations (see e.g. Clouded II documentary). Carbon Useage Effectiveness and Water Useage Effectiveness are complementary metrics. None of these metrics can tell us whether the renewable energy used for the data centre could be put to better uses. |
 | What is the average localised carbon intensity of electricity powering your data centre(s), for all regions you propose to deliver the service? | Renewable energy claims can used "market-based" accounting or "location-based" accounting. Market-based approaches can contain useful information, but by themselves they are misleading. Ideally you want both. See if you can get data for the past few years. Make sure you figure out the role of carbon offsets. |
-| What is the data centre’s carbon footprint? | It is important to pressure Cloud providers to be ever more transparent about the carbon footprint (and other environmental impacts) of their activities. |
-| What methodologies are used to calculate carbon footprint and other environmental impacts? What types of uncertainty are present in this data? | Some uncertainties may be impossible to eliminate, but it is good to identify them (and in some cases it may be possible to quantify them). |
-| To what extent does the provider use carbon offsetting? | Carbon offsetting should be avoided as much as possible. The planet’s capacity to offset emissions is limited. The remaining carbon budget is tiny, and the strongest moral and pragmatic claims to that budget lie in the Global South. |
-| Is the data centre’s excess heat redistributed to the district heating network? | Heat may also be captured and used in other ways, i.e. as a supplemental power source. Heat re-use is usually a good sign, although as  |
+| What ecolabels or certifications apply to the buildings of the data centre? |  E.g. Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM), ENERGY STAR, Green Star, Comprehensive Assessment System for Building Environmental Efficiency  (CASBEE), the DGNB System,  Green Globes, HQE, ISO 50001, Superior Energy Performance, etc.
+| What is the data centre’s carbon footprint? | It is important to pressure Cloud providers to be ever more transparent about the carbon footprint (and other environmental impacts) of their activities. Keep in mind that purchasing a Cloud service often won't mean access to one data centre only: you can ask about the provider's entire portfolio of data centres, as well as the specific resources that will be fulfilling your requirements. |
+| What methodologies are used to calculate carbon footprint and other environmental impacts? What types of uncertainty are present in this data? | Some uncertainties may be impossible to eliminate, but it is good to identify them (and in some cases it may be possible to quantify them). Ask about market-based and location-based carbon accounting. Ideally it's good to have data from both methods. |
+| What are the company's decarbonisation targets? What steps have been taken and will be taken to reduce the CO2e emissions associated with the cloud services being tendered? |    |
+| Does the company purchase Renewable Energy Certificates, and/or use Power Purchase Agreements? How about 24/7 hourly matching?  |    |
+
+| To what extent does the provider use carbon offsetting? | Carbon offsetting should be avoided as much as possible. The planet’s capacity to offset emissions is limited. The remaining carbon budget is tiny, and the strongest moral and pragmatic claims to that budget lie in the Global South. Ask about Beyond Value Chain Mitigation. |
+| Is the data centre’s excess heat redistributed to the district heating network? | Heat may also be captured and used in other ways, i.e. as a supplemental power source. Heat re-use in itself is a good sign, although as a rule of thumb, it might also correlate with situating data centres near denser populations where there is more need for scarce renewable resources ... so it is complicated.  |
 | What are the other local energy needs? | Where the data centre is sited, If the data centre wasn't using the energy, who would be using that energy? |
 | How much electricity does the data centre generate from on-site renewables? |   |
 | Was there opposition to the siting of the data centre from local stakeholders, and how was it resolved? |   |
 | How is the data centre integrated into the local community now? |   |
-| What is the data centre’s water usage like? |   |
+| What is the data centre’s water usage like? | You can ask about WUE for example.  |
 | What jurisdiction is the data centre in? |   |
 | What is the data centre’s exposure and vulnerability to physical climate risks? | For example, proximity to flood plains. |
 | What climate and ESG-related standards and certifications does the provider use? What forms of independent verification are used? | See [Rina Diane Caballar, 'Tougher Reporting Mandates Ahead for Data Centers' (*Data Center Knowledge*, 2023)] (https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/regulation/tougher-reporting-mandates-ahead-data-centers)  |