HotCarbon 2025
The HotCarbon’25 papers are published in the ACM Digital Library as a special issue of the SIGEnergy Energy Informatics Review.
Day 1 - Thursday, July 10, 2025
Keynote: The Interplay between AI and Electric Power Systems
Le Xie (Harvard)
This presentation examines two primary dimensions of the evolving interplay between artificial intelligence (AI) and power systems. First, AI’s increasing electricity demand poses both short-run operational and long-run planning challenges, making it necessary to reform and modernize the existing electric grid. Second, new AI capabilities present an unprecedented opportunity to enhance the efficiency, reliability, and adaptability of power systems, from real-time grid control to long-term expansion planning.
Session 1: Data Center Sustainability & Thermal Management
Chair: Ulrich Kremer (Rutgers University)
Data Centers Carbon Emissions at Crossroads: An Empirical Study
- Diptyaroop Maji (University of Massachusetts, Amherst)
- Walid Hanafy (University of Massachusetts Amherst)
- Li Wu (University of Massachusetts Amherst)
- David Irwin (University of Massachusetts Amherst)
- Prashant Shenoy (University of Massachusetts Amherst)
- Ramesh Sitaraman (UMass Amherst & Akamai Tech)
- Rui Lu (The Hong Kong Polytechnic University)
- Dan Wang (The Hong Kong Polytechnic University)
Session 2: Hardware & Manufacturing Impact
Chair: Li Wu (University of Massachusetts Amherst)
Wafer-Scale Systems: A Carbon Perspective
- Alicia Golden (Harvard University)
- Mariam Elgamal (Harvard University)
- Abdulrahman Mahmoud (MBZUAI)
- Gage Hills (Harvard University)
- Carole-Jean Wu (FAIR at Meta)
- Gu-Yeon Wei, David Brooks (Harvard University)
When Servers Meet Species: A Fab-to-Grave Lens on Computing's Biodiversity Impact
- Tianyao Shi (Purdue University)
- Ritbik Kumar (Purdue University)
- Inez Hua (Purdue University)
- Yi Ding (Purdue University)
Dirty Bits in Low-Earth Orbit: The Carbon Footprint of Launching Computers
- Robin Ohs (Saarland University)
- Gregory F. Stock (Saarland University)
- Andreas Schmidt (Saarland University)
- Juan A. Fraire (Saarland University)
- Holger Hermanns (Saarland University)
Re-Evaluating Storage Carbon Emissions In Machine Learning Workloads
- Dorota Kopczyk (University of Minnesota - Twin Cities)
- Abhishek Chandra (University of Minnesota - Twin Cities)
Session 3: Edge Computing & Distributed Systems
Chair: Yi Ding (Purdue University)
From Component to System: Rethinking Edge Computing Design Through a Carbon-Aware Lens
- Xuesi Chen (Cornell Tech)
- Ariel Goldner (Columbia University)
- Eren Yildiz (Georgia Institute of Technology)
- Ilan Mandel (Cornell Tech)
- Tingyu Cheng (Georgia Institute of Technology)
- Josiah Hester (Georgia Institute of Technology)
- Udit Gupta (Cornell Tech)
Towards Decentralized and Sustainable Foundation Model Training with the Edge
- Leyang Xue (The University of Edinburgh)
- Meghana Madhyastha (Johns Hopkins University)
- Randal Burns (Johns Hopkins University)
- Myungjin Lee (Cisco Research)
- Mahesh Marina (The University of Edinburgh)
Towards Performance and Energy Aware Kubernetes Scheduler
- Han Dong (Hamilton College)
- Parul Singh (Red Hat Inc.)
- Yara Awad (Boston University)
- Felix George (IBM Research - India)
- Krishnasuri Narayanam (IBM Research)
- Sanjay Arora (Red Hat Inc)
- Jonathan Appavoo (Boston University)
Day 2 - Friday, July 11, 2025
Keynote: Carbon negative datacenters require a marathon, not a sprint
Daniel S. Berger (Microsoft)
Large cloud providers like Google and Microsoft promise significant carbon emission reductions over the next five years. Drawing on my experience prototyping and deploying sustainable cloud building blocks, this talk will offer a practitioner’s view on our progress and the challenges ahead. While we have key wins and learnings, achieving sustainable cloud computing requires a holistic strategy since no single aspect dominates a cloud’s carbon emissions. We must tackle operational and embodied carbon across AI, general-purpose compute, storage, and networking, spanning software and hardware stacks. This talk identifies key open strategic decisions and invites the HotCarbon community to help us find the answers.
Session 5: Infrastructure & Long-term Sustainability
Chair: Walid Hanafy (University of Massachusetts Amherst)
Carbon Topography Representation: Improving Impacts of Data Center Lifecycle
- Olivier Weppe (Univ. Rennes, INSA Rennes, CNRS,IETR - UMR 6164 F-35000 Rennes)
- David Bekri (HES-SO Fribourg)
- Thibaut Marty (Univ. Rennes, INSA Rennes, CNRS,IETR - UMR 6164 F-35000 Rennes)
- Loïc Guibert (HES-SO Fribourg)
- Louise Aubet (Resilio)
- Jean-Christophe Prévotet (Univ. Rennes, INSA Rennes, CNRS,IETR - UMR 6164 F-35000 Rennes)
- Maxime Pelcat (Univ. Rennes, INSA Rennes, CNRS,IETR - UMR 6164 F-35000 Rennes)
- Sebastien Rumley (HES-SO Fribourg)
Uncertainty-aware Day-ahead Datacenter Workload Planning with Load-following Small Modular Reactors
- Yijie Yang (The Hong Kong Polytechnic University)
- Dan Wang (The Hong Kong Polytechnic University)
- Jian Shi (University of Houston)
- Chenye Wu (The Chinese University of Hong Kong - Shenzhen)
- Zhu Han (University of Houston)
Not All Water Consumption Is Equal: A Water Stress Weighted Metric for Sustainable Computing
- Yanran Wu (Purdue University)
- Inez Hua (Purdue University)
- Yi Ding (Purdue University)
Session 6: Causal Modeling & Resource Optimization
Chair: Prateek Sharma (Indiana University)
Causal Machine Learning Approaches for Modelling Data Center Heat Recovery: A Physical Testbed Study
- David Zapata Gonzalez (Paderborn University)
- Marcel Meyer (Paderborn University)
- Oliver Müller (Paderborn University)
Noise-aware Client Selection for carbon-efficient Federated Learning via Gradient Norm Thresholding
- Patrick Wilhelm (Technical University Berlin)
- Inese Yilmaz (Technical University Berlin)
- Odej Kao (Technical University Berlin)
User Tolerance as a Factor in Sustainable Website Design
- Grace Everts (Harvey Mudd College)
- Arthi Padmanabhan (Harvey Mudd College)
Open Discussion: Can Cloud Computing Escape the Jevons Paradox
Chair: Prateek Sharma (Indiana University)