Teams at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and Transform have pioneered a low-cost, sustainable, and innovative solution to ensuring government prototypes can run from guaranteed renewable power.
As hyperscalers don’t report accurately on their consumption of fossil fuels in data centres (often incorporating offsets), it has been impossible for government clients to ascertain if any load is powered renewably. Until now.
A successful hack day brought together solar panels, Raspberry Pis and software, resulting in the local hosting of digital prototypes and the replacement of cloud-based services.
A Defra spokesman said this puts the department at the forefront of testing clean energy use cases, in line with the government’s clean energy superpower mission.
The challenge: carbon cost of prototyping
Following the government shift towards user-centered, product-led design, the need to build and test prototypes is essential and growing.
Defra’s teams regularly create small prototypes to test with real users, from farmers to importers, to validate ideas quickly.
“We go out to real people and demo in real scenarios, “ John Steward, Head of Product at Defra, explained.
Traditionally, these prototypes, often built using the GOV.UK prototype kit, are hosted on cloud platforms like Heroku.
While convenient, this approach comes with a financial and environmental cost. The reliance on cloud data centres, whose energy sources can be non-transparent and whose providers’ data often relies on questionable carbon offsetting, creates a ‘climate debt’ inconsistent with Defra’s mission to lead on sustainability.
The hack: an off-grid solution
The team’s solution was to create a self-sufficient, off-grid computer cluster. The box contains a cluster of Raspberry Pi computers – the stripped-back, low-power devices famous for teaching kids to code. This cluster is powered by small solar panels, with a battery backup for overcast days or nighttime.
This setup allows the team to run multiple prototypes with a net-zero environmental impact, directly controlling the energy source. The key benefits are:
- Low cost: The entire box costs around a few hundred pounds to build.
- Rapid implementation: A prototype can be ready for usability testing and design validation in a matter of weeks.
- Scalable: The Kubernetes cluster allows for multiple prototypes to run simultaneously. The team estimates that running the cluster for 200 days negates the embodied carbon in the hardware, generating net positive environmental impact following this
- Repurpose: Unlike “shadow infrastructure” hardware, which rightly concerns IT directors – the components are reusable. If the box is no longer needed, the Raspberry Pis can be repurposed for countless uses elsewhere.
As Steward noted, “No one has done this before in this way. People have attached Raspberry Pis to solar panels, but not as an off-grid, standalone compute solution for government prototyping.”
The impact: a green digital mindset
Beyond being an innovative technical solution, this project marks a change in sustainability mindset and culture.
Steward sees sustainability as the new benchmark for innovation in digital design, saying: “Sustainability is what accessibility was 10 years ago – an add on. In 10 years from now, it will be built into solutions from the get-go.”
The project champions a move from project-led to product-led thinking, where teams are empowered to solve problems holistically.
Product managers are encouraged to be ‘green and digital’, considering the climate impact of their work from day one.
“It’s about having the intentionality to seek a net-positive impact rather than accepting that “burning a little carbon doesn’t matter. “
Giorgio Peacock, Defra product manager, highlighted how this thinking helps simplify complex legacy systems and processes, a fundamental challenge for an organisation with the scale and complexity of Defra.
This approach puts power directly into the hands of the development team, enabling them to move faster. It delivers significant cost savings and, most importantly, provides a tangible, positive environmental benefit.
“What’s so exciting is that this project proves how small, intentional changes can create radical improvements, “ explains Claire Robinson, Director of Sustainable Consulting at Transform.
“By thinking differently about a routine process, our teams have created a solution that is cheaper, faster, and greener, setting a new standard for sustainable innovation in the public sector. “
The team has plans to open-source the instructions, allowing other government departments and anyone interested to build their own.
It’s a move which Defra sees as a validated, scalable case for renewably powered off-grid IT.
