The growing imperative of ESG- and carbon-related issues in the HPC industry – and in IT generally – is the topic of this week’s @HPCpodcast episode (sponsored by Lenovo). Shahin and Doug speak with Adrian Cockcroft, an analyst colleague of Shahin’s at OrionX and former vice president of sustainability architecture at Amazon Web Services, where he helped customers apply sustainability practices to their businesses. The good news shared by Adrian is that Big Tech companies and IT in general are decarbonizing more effectively than had been expected a few years ago. Even as systems become denser and hotter, data centers increasingly are adopting renewable energy sources, liquid cooling and other measures that reduce usage of carbon-based energy sources. He tells us that on a per-watts basis, the IT industry has plateaued – though, of course, total watts consumed continues to climb.