The global climate crisis has spurred businesses across industries to prioritize emissions reduction strategies. As a result, the demand for technologies that support these efforts has skyrocketed. But what if the very technology designed to help us becomes part of the problem?
The truth is, rapid digitalization has a hidden cost: increased energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. As per the International Telecommunication Union’s (ITU) statistics, the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector’s contribution to global CO2 emissions is estimated to be at least 1.7% and potentially as high as 4%.
However, there’s a silver lining. Information technology, encompassing hardware, software, and communication systems, holds immense potential to be a solution, not a contributor, to the climate crisis. The Global e-Sustainability Initiative highlights this by suggesting IT solutions can cut nearly 10 times more CO2 than they emit through the greening of IT, or, simply put, implementing “Green IT” strategies.
At Carboledger, we believe software can be a powerful weapon in the fight against climate change. In this blog series, we’ll delve into the green software practices we implement to minimize our environmental impact and empower our users to do the same.
Green IT is an umbrella term encompassing environmentally sound practices across the entire IT landscape—hardware, software, systems, applications, and user behavior. This comprehensive approach breaks down into three key areas:
Over the years, much emphasis and progress have been made towards making IT hardware efficient and environmentally friendly. But, to realize the fuller benefits, we need to take our green initiatives down to the software. There are two broad ways of looking at software: software as part of the climate problem and software as part of the climate solution. Building green software and doing it to scale requires the creation of a trusted ecosystem of people, standards, tools, and best practices.
At Carboledger, our commitment to sustainability shapes not only the ethos but also the very architecture of our software development practices. We’ve taken significant strides to integrate Google’s Go Green guide and principles laid out by the Green Software Foundation into our processes, emphasizing efficiency and innovation to minimize our environmental footprint.
Our commitment to providing digital solutions to reduce emissions for our customers also gives us an opportunity to conduct our business in a responsible way. As a step towards helping the software industry create sustainable solutions, we are proud to provide an inside look into our software practices and the conscious decisions we take for software code written by our team.
Green software is a rapidly evolving field that sits at the crossroads of climate science, software design, energy markets, hardware considerations, and even data center design. At its core, green software is designed to minimize its carbon footprint. This approach focuses on three key areas:
In 2019, the initial eight principles of green software engineering were established. These principles have been refined over time, with the 2022 update streamlining some principles and introducing a new one focused on understanding climate commitments.
Carbon efficiency
“Emit the least amount of carbon possible.”
Everything we do emits carbon into the atmosphere, and this constitutes the first principle of green software: carbon efficiency, emitting the least amount of carbon possible per unit of work*.* In the software space, building carbon-efficient applications takes centre stage for climate solutions. Being carbon-efficient is about building applications that add the same value for you or your users but emit less carbon.
Energy efficiency
“Use the least amount of energy possible.”
The second principle urges using the least amount of energy possible. Green software takes responsibility for an application’s electricity consumption and is designed to consume as little as possible. Understanding how to quantify the energy consumption of an application and the energy proportionality factor gives green software practitioners insights into the application’s energy consumption behaviour.
Carbon Awareness
“Do more when the electricity is cleaner, and do less when the electricity is dirtier”.
The third principle promotes shifting energy-intensive activities to times when the electricity grid is powered by cleaner sources. This way, you can leverage your growing awareness of carbon footprint to minimize your impact during peak hours when the grid relies more on high-carbon sources. The key concepts that this principle covers on how to be more carbon-aware include carbon intensity, variability of carbon intensity, dispatchability & curtailment, marginal carbon intensity and energy markets
Hardware Efficiency
“Use the least amount of embodied carbon possible.”
The fourth principle emphasizes minimizing the embodied carbon footprint of hardware used in software development. Embodied carbon refers to the total carbon emissions associated with a device’s entire lifecycle, encompassing its creation, use, and eventual disposal. When calculating a software product’s total carbon footprint, it’s crucial to consider both the operational carbon emissions generated during its use and the embodied carbon associated with the hardware employed in its development.
Measurement
“What you can’t measure, you can’t improve.”
The fifth principle emphasizes the importance of precise carbon footprint measurement for software. This entails determining the specific emission category associated with the software and selecting the most appropriate metrics to quantify its emissions. The Software Carbon Intensity (SCI) specification, developed by the Green Software Foundation’s Standards Working Group, serves as a sustainability score for software applications, prompting action towards emission reduction. Unlike total emissions figures, the SCI is a metric specifically designed to calculate emissions as a rate, providing a more nuanced understanding of a software’s environmental impact.
Climate Commitments
“Understand the exact mechanism of carbon reduction.”
The sixth principle underscores the importance of acquiring a thorough understanding of carbon reduction mechanisms. This includes gaining a working knowledge of various methodologies, such as carbon elimination/abatement, avoidance/offsetting, and removal/neutralization. Additionally, this principle emphasizes the need to comprehend the spectrum of climate reduction strategies available to organizations, ranging from achieving carbon neutrality to net zero emissions. By grasping the distinct meanings and implications of each approach, organizations can make informed decisions and select the most suitable strategy for their specific circumstances.
To translate these principles into actionable steps, green software patterns have been developed. These patterns are blueprints for software practitioners to incorporate green principles into their everyday work. Importantly, these patterns are designed to be vendor-neutral, ensuring broad applicability. Through green software practices, green software patterns are applied to specific software products, providing practical guidance on using existing software solutions more sustainably. Therefore, these green software practices can be put into action by practitioners like:
Green software practices at Carboledger are guided by the principles of Green Software Foundation and Google’s Go Green guide for developers and architects. Our commitment to sustainability extends throughout the development lifecycle, ingrained in the mindset of our developers. We take a proactive approach to sustainability, incorporating it into every stage of development.
Carboledger views sustainability as a journey and transition phase, and we have more exciting initiatives in the pipeline as we continue to invest in creating a sustainable solution for our partners. One of the first step in this direction for Carboledger is to implement SCI (Software Carbon Intensity API) to provide comprehensive reports on carbon emissions due to software usage by our partner. We believe this data will become crucial for Carboledger and our partners to engage and work together to reduce their carbon footprint.
This commitment to sustainability is core to our mission at Carboledger. We believe in empowering businesses with the tools and insights necessary to create a greener future, and we’re dedicated to leading by example. Curious to join the Carboledger Engineering team? Learn more about our culture and open roles
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