Green Software Development: The Future of Responsible Engineering

Day by day, there is a growing need for us to be conscious of our usage, be it technical or other. As technology further evolves, we will need to be aware of our consumption and find alternatives. This will lead to reduced environmental impact and a greener future. Let us dive deep into green software development. What is green software development? Green software development is a method of developing software that focuses on reducing the environmental impact of the process. It is an approach that seeks to reduce energy consumption, waste, and pollution associated with traditional coding practises. By implementing these strategies throughout the development process, developers can significantly reduce their environmental footprint while still producing high-quality code that meets customer needs.

8 Principles of Green Software Development

1. Carbon: Developers should create software that provides value to consumers while emitting fewer greenhouse gases.

2. Electricity: Applications that are energy-efficient employ software components that consume little energy.

3. Carbon intensity:Carbon intensity is a measure of how much carbon dioxide is released for every kilowatt-hour of energy used. Companies should get as much of their power as they can from renewable energy sources, which produce less carbon.

4. Embedded carbon: Embedded carbon is the amount of carbon that comes from manufacturing and getting rid of electronic gadgets. Companies should make software that cuts down on the amount of carbon they release when making and getting rid of electronic devices.

5. Energy proportionality: The correlation between how much a device is used and how much power it uses is called its energy proportionality. The more a gadget is used, the better it can turn electricity into something else. The goal of this concept is to make sure that the hardware uses as little energy as possible by making sure that it is used a lot.

6. Networking: Routers, switches, and servers, all of which are linked to the network, move data as it is sent and received. Each of these things has carbon in it and runs on energy. The goal is to cut down on carbon emissions and make the software use less energy by making the data smaller and making it move over the network less far.

7. Demand shaping: This principle states that the demand for computing power can be moved to a different time or place and shaped to match the supply.

8. Measurement and optimisation: This principle states that the demand for computing power can be moved to a different time or place and shaped to match the supply.

Organisations are vowing to step up their actions about the global climate disaster by going carbon neutral or even carbon negative. Organisations will definitely be able to meet ESG scores if they make the most of the resources they already have and build green software.