Talk:Movement Strategy/Initiatives/Support Environmental Sustainability Practices

Report about the recommendation "Increase the Sustainability of Our Movement"

Hi, we have prepared a report summarizing strategic data and activities related to the recommendation Increase the Sustainability of Our Movement, focusing on projects led by the Wikimedia Foundation. It includes a section about this initiative. We encourage others to add work they have done or are aware of. This mapping is an invitation to celebrate strategic achievements and focus on areas needing attention and collaboration to succeed. Qgil-WMF (talk) 10:06, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

Hi @Qgil-WMF, thank you for reaching out! As you can imagine, I am most interested in the part about the data centers. Do you know how the word cover in the report is understood in the sentence All but one of our data center vendors cover 100% of their energy usage with renewable energy sources? I am asking because I hear so much greenwashing language these days, and my fear is that the data centers continue to run on coal, but the data center businesses do some magic trick to make it sound like they don't. Gnom (talk) 17:47, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

Hi @Gnom, we replied to a similar question on Talk:Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan/2023-2024 (see section Environment in the collapsed comments). The report Mark Bergsma refers to includes a "Data Centers" section which provides more details about zero-carbon sources. If you need more information, I can ask. Qgil-WMF (talk) 10:28, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your lightning fast response, @Qgil-WMF. Both the 2023-2024 WMF Annual Plan's talk page and the 2022 WMF Environmental Sustainability Report also use the word "cover" when discussing this point – and I am unsure about the exact meaning of this expression. Please forgive me for maybe being overly skeptical, but I want to be sure these news are actually worth celebrating in the light of all the greenwashing language coming from the data center industry over the past years. For example, we would not want to accept our vendors purchasing carbon credits (RECs) as a sustainability achievement ([1]). Would it be possible to clarify this? (I could then also finally update the outdated information on the Sustainability Initiative page.) Thank you again, Gnom (talk) 06:55, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

@Gnom fair enough. I will ask. It's August, Wikimania is coming, maybe having a good answer takes time but we will respond here when we have an answer. Qgil-WMF (talk) 08:55, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

@Gnom Hi 👋. When we are choosing a new datacenter, we always take that into account. You can check some of them. For example our main datacenter (in US) is from Equinix and according to their report all of their datacenters in US and EU are 100% powered by renewable energy. From the procurement documents of the newest data center (in France) I'm seeing it has been also explicitly mentioned that it's 100% powered by renewable sources. From what I'm seeing so far, there is no REC. On top of that, they are usually in countries with a good infrastructure of renewable energy (France, The Netherlands). Hope that helps. Let me know if you have any more questions! ASarabadani (WMF) (talk) 10:18, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for checking this, @Qgil-WMF –  and enjoy Wikimania!

And also thank you for your response, @ASarabadani (WMF) – the "problem" is (or: used to be?) the data centers in the United States (which also make up by far the biggest part of our energy use). You are correct that Amsterdam and Marseille are (or: used to be?) our "shining examples" (Singapore, however, is again problematic). --Gnom (talk) 15:20, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Hello @Qgil-WMF, have you been able to find out what we mean when we use the word "cover"? Are we referring to carbon credits (bad) or actual on-grid renewable energy (good)? Thank you, Gnom (talk) 14:36, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

@ASarabadani (WMF) Thank you for picking up the job of answering this question, which we should probably better discuss here: Talk:Sustainability Initiative#Anything new on the data centers? Gnom (talk) 11:37, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

Hi @Gnom, thanks for your interest! When calculating our data center related emissions, we use the emission factors of the grids where the data centers are located (you can find info on each of the grid's renewable mix on pages 9/10 of the 2022 report - but we're happy to add a more detailed breakdown between sources here: Talk:Sustainability Initiative#Anything new on the data centers?). We mention in the report that most of our data center vendors are procuring enough renewable energy to match or cover their demand (via RECs or PPAs), but just to reiterate - those procurement decisions are not being factored into our actual GHG inventory. Regarding those purchases - we're unfortunately limited by the availability of information/what our vendors choose to share with us. For example, we know that CyrusOne has signed PPAs for projects on the same electricity grid as codfw, but we don't know where Equinix is sourcing its RECs or PPAs. EMorris (WMF) (talk) 21:27, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Hello @EMorris (WMF), thank you for your response. I understand your answer to mean that the word 'cover' in the sentence All but one of our data center vendors cover 100% of their energy usage with renewable energy sources used repeatedly in official WMF communications refers to RECs. Is my understanding correct? If yes: This is very bad. (If you are new-ish to this field, you can also watch John Oliver explain the problem with RECs.) Is there a way for us, as Wikimedia, to make a conscious decision to not engange in this kind of greenwashing, and to formally ban this kind of language from our official communications? Can we maybe have a call about this? Gnom (talk) 16:54, 1 December 2023 (UTC)