Adam Newman

(he/him)

Adam Newman

Root & Branch

Co-Founder

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Adam Newman is Co-Founder of Root & Branch, a developer platform focused on building and hosting websites and cloud applications with energy and carbon emissions measured end to end. His work sits at the intersection of green software, web sustainability and practical emissions reduction. Adam also co-runs Green Software Brighton, co-chairs the Green Software Foundation’s SCI for Web working group, contributes to the Web Sustainability Guidelines as a W3C Invited Expert, and brings a practical perspective on how software can be built with a lower environmental impact.

Sessions

Adam Newman

Mariachiara Restuccia

Jamie Matthews

Justin French

The Hidden Cost of Code: Can We Build Technology That Doesn’t Cost the Earth?

Sustainability in technology is often discussed at a high level, but far less attention is given to what it actually means in practice for the teams designing, building and running modern systems. This session brings the conversation back down to reality. Where do emissions really come from in software? How much is driven by cloud infrastructure, compute intensity, and inefficiencies that are often invisible at scale? And as AI adoption accelerates, how do organisations balance its environmental cost with the value it creates? Rather than taking a theoretical view, this panel focuses on the decisions being made every day inside engineering and product teams. What does “green software” actually look like when you are shipping product? What trade-offs are being made between performance, cost and sustainability? And who is ultimately accountable for those choices? Bringing together perspectives from engineering, sustainability and policy, the discussion will explore how organisations are starting to respond, where progress is real, and where gaps still exist. If sustainability was treated as a core constraint, not a consideration, how differently would we build?

Adam Newman

Mariachiara Restuccia

Jamie Matthews

Justin French

The Hidden Cost of Code: Can We Build Technology That Doesn’t Cost the Earth?

Sustainability in technology is often discussed at a high level, but far less attention is given to what it actually means in practice for the teams designing, building and running modern systems. This session brings the conversation back down to reality. Where do emissions really come from in software? How much is driven by cloud infrastructure, compute intensity, and inefficiencies that are often invisible at scale? And as AI adoption accelerates, how do organisations balance its environmental cost with the value it creates? Rather than taking a theoretical view, this panel focuses on the decisions being made every day inside engineering and product teams. What does “green software” actually look like when you are shipping product? What trade-offs are being made between performance, cost and sustainability? And who is ultimately accountable for those choices? Bringing together perspectives from engineering, sustainability and policy, the discussion will explore how organisations are starting to respond, where progress is real, and where gaps still exist. If sustainability was treated as a core constraint, not a consideration, how differently would we build?