She Wrote California's AI Policy in 60 Days | with Nolwenn Godard

The tech industry talks about AI's carbon footprint. Nolwenn Godard says the real issue is resource limits: energy, water, rare earth minerals. "Tech doesn't want any limit, but the world has limits, nature has limits."Nolwenn spent 13 years at PayPal, where she pitched a carbon calculator that was too early for a US conversation. She went on to help write California's first executive order on Generative AI in just 60 days, fighting to get climate language into the policy. Today she runs Carbon 2C, helping software companies find the massive waste hiding in their own codebases.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━In this episode, we cover:The physics of why an AI query uses dramatically more energy than a Google searchHow she got climate language into California's GenAI executive order in 60 days, and the moment she asked "Am I the only one thinking of this here?"Why companies are going quiet on climate ("green hushing") even when they still want to actHer argument that resource limits, not just carbon, are the real environmental cost of AIWhere to start if you're a product manager, engineer, or CTO who wants to find the climate lever in your current role━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━About Nolwenn GodardNolwenn Godard helps turn tech jobs into climate jobs. After leadership roles at PayPal, SoFi, and California's Office of Data and Innovation, she founded Carbon 2C, her sustainability consultancy for software companies. She co-authored Sustainable by Design: A Playbook for Product Managers, leads Green IO US, and co-leads the SF chapter of the Green Software Foundation.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Chapters0:00 Intro2:07 Growing up with climate at the dinner table4:34 From France to Silicon Valley6:09 PayGreen: the climate idea PayPal wasn't ready for11:34 Traditional AI vs. generative AI and the real cost of AI video13:26 Writing California's GenAI executive order in 60 days19:49 "Am I the only one thinking of this here?"23:02 Founding Carbon 2C25:46 Do companies care about green software?27:10 Green hushing: the new greenwashing29:25 Can change happen without regulation?33:38 MasterCard: $28M savings, 47% electricity cut36:17 Where to start if you're in tech39:30 Moral ambition and the tech industry45:52 Where to find Nolwenn━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Resources mentionedNolwenn on LinkedInCarbon 2C - Nolwenn's consultancyClimate Product Leaders Playbook (free)Resources for a Climate Career (see Tech Stack)Green Software FoundationGreen IO podcastElectricity MapsAI Watch (browser extension for real-time AI carbon/water tracking)terra.do (climate education)Climate Fresk: a 3 hour workshop to get you up to speedCalifornia Executive Order N-12-23Disclaimer: This episode is for informational purposes only. Views are the guest’s own, and nothing here should be taken as professional advice.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━🎧 Listen to the podcastYouTubeApple Podcasts━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━🗞️ Sign up for the newsletterhttps://anyjobcanbeaclimatejob.substack.com/🤝 [email protected]✨ Work with meFor speaking, coaching, and workshops━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━🎙 CreditsProduced and hosted by Louisa HenryEdited by Alex LeffMusic by Run Riot RunLogo by Cassidy Frost