Catching up - November 2025
"ChatGPT, put more memes in the fire and run me a bath"
This issue - moving heat around; a swing at accessibility plugins; lots of links.
This issue proudly sponsored by: [ your name here ]
“Good for the Planet, good for the wallet: how AI can heat our water”
During one of my favorite presentations from London’s GreenIO conference, Mark Buss (OVO) and Charlie Beharrell (Heata) presented a solution to data center heat management: move the heat to where it can do some good - domestic boilers.
Consumer benefits:
The heat from one AI data centre could provide hot water for >100,000 homes.
Up to £340 / year from offsetting electricity.
Each unit saves up to 750kg of CO2e / year.
Karmic downside: the boiler/server is a black box - the householder has no idea what the server is working on. You could be heating your home with AI slop climate disinformation memes, or worse.
BBC coverage. Same idea, but swimming pools. Trending towards The Machine Stops?
Accessibility overlays - a waste of data (probably)
Accessibility is my day job so this master’s thesis caught my eye - The Impact of Web Accessibility Overlays on the Usability and User Experience for People with Permanent Visual Impairments.
Top line result:
The research shows that accessibility overlays, in their current form, do not effectively improve the usability or UX for individuals with permanent visual impairments.
There’s a sustainability downside too - most overlays add a hefty chunk to page size. I found that one common overlay added at least 1.15MB to page size.
For a better approach, take a gander at the www.mightybytes.com site - it has a minimalist set of accessibility controls implemented holistically with their CSS, adding hardly any appreciable page weight.
Free web sustainability benchmark tool from James Chudley
Massive, useful, massively useful: the Digital Sustainability Resources Miro board.
“Determining the digital carbon footprint awareness of pre-service teachers “(Nature)
The study’s purpose was not to measure the teachers’ digital footprints, but rather to measure their awareness of the concept of the digital carbon footprint.
Concepts introduced:
Digital Carbon Footprint Awareness Scale
“Digital sobriety” (using digital tools wisely and moderately) into teacher education programs.
Results:
Participants had significantly higher awareness of the environmental impact of electronic device usage (the physical component) than they did of data transmission (the invisible component).
I’m uncomfortable with anything that makes the carbon footprint of digital the responsibility of the consumer. Especially since it will always rank fairly low in terms of carbon impact compared to food, travel, other consumption.
Giant AI infrastructure Map
Interesting job at HSBC
Product (Sustainability) Awareness Manager, Sheffield UK
Reporting to a Sustainability Practice Lead, the role will drive adoption of sustainability as a topic and product within Technology.
The Latest From Corporate
Facebook “Design for Sustainability: New Design Principles for Reducing IT Hardware Emissions”
The Amazon Wooden Warehouse
“…a living laboratory where Amazon plans to test more than 40 sustainability strategies that could reshape how the company builds its next 1,200 delivery stations worldwide…”
Newsletter / Podcast roundup
Curiously Green #66b looks at recent roll-backs in Google’s climate commitments.
GreenIO talks about the truth behind Big Tech’s carbon numbers.
AllTech has a lot of AI-related webinars coming up.
More, more, more
Update your understanding of Web Performance (Smashing); Patagonia releases a novel warts-and-all sustainability report; lots of recent talk about UX metrics - time to get sustainability on the score card as well.
EnergyAssessment.eco by Google - “lower omissions across your supply chain”; AI used to lower CO2 in Aluminum recycling; everyone hates data centers; renewables continue to surge; more “your streaming is killing the planet” noise.
Talk to me
Want to chat UX / sustainability / other? As an experiment, I’m opening my calendar for 30-min calls through the rest of the year. Book me here.