It seems as if we as a people like to count things. We count how many years we have lived on this blue green sphere, how many steps we take, calories we burn. Many have also been countin carbon (emission) for a long time. The interesting thing about numbers is that even small numbers become big (really big) if multiplied.

Some time ago I read a blog post about a developer that counted the carbon footprint one of his NPM packages had on the world. I think he was modest in the count of websites using his package but from the few bytes he was able to shave off its size - it equaled a flight around the world.

With 1.4 billion devices running Windows 10 or Windows 11 1 saving some carbon for operating each and every device will have a huge impact. This is exactly what Microsoft is doing with the latest updates of Windows 11. Said updates can now be installed when it results in less carbon emission. This is achived by collecting data in the carbon emissions from the power grid (what do you know - many countries/states makes this data available online!) as well as metrics from the local machine (such as connected to power source etc) 2.

Being on the edge of a power crisis in Europe as well as a dooming climate crisis this a warm (pun intended) welcomed development from Microsoft. A firm that have been carbon neutral since 2012. What is your companys year it became carbon neutral? As a CIO what I can do is to update the policies for what devices we purchase and how we recycle them, but also what cloud providers we are using. Ever carbon counts - especially when it is multiplied!