Software development is not only about creating functional and user-friendly applications but also about creating software that is good for the planet. Sustainable software or green software, minimizes its environmental impact and maximizes its energy efficiency throughout its lifecycle. Such software is designed, developed, and deployed with the environment in mind. Software developers and architects have both the power and responsibility to create sustainable software that can help reduce the environmental footprint of products and services offered by an enterprise.
To?create sustainable software, one needs to follow the principles of sustainable software engineering, which are a core set of competencies that can help define, build, and run sustainable software applications. These principles cover aspects such as infrastructure, architecture, design, code, data, testing, deployment, operations, and monitoring.?
Software developers and architects have the power to create green software that is not only functional but also environmentally friendly. Here are some ways they can make software greener:?
- Choose infrastructure wisely. Using shared, on-demand, and scalable resources that match both the workload needs and performance goals. Software must not necessarily work always on newer versions of hardware but can have a few versions of backward compatibility. It's a good way to opt for data centers that use renewable energy sources, efficient cooling systems, and high server utilization that are environment-friendly. When deploying to the cloud, select regions that have lower carbon intensity, or less carbon emissions per unit of electricity. Cloud providers often publish the list of such regions and cloud services especially compute workloads are greener.
- Design software for efficiency. Make software in such a way that it uses less energy and hardware resources by adopting modern application architectures, such as optimized logical constructs, lesser data exchanges, and services calls, localizing compute processing, and opting for serverless computing or functions-as-a-service (FaaS) architecture, etc. A very good reference to it is - Microsoft's principles of sustainable software engineering. These architectures are applicable to all kinds of workloads whether they are going to be deployed on-premise or in the cloud, and allow us to fine-tune the capacity and energy consumption according to the demand.
- Follow Well-architected frameworks and design principles. The Big-3 cloud providers (Microsoft, Amazon, and Google) are not only committed to building sustainable data centers and cloud services but also provide best practices and guidelines for software developers and architects in the form of cloud architecture frameworks. These are extremely good resources - Microsoft design principles of sustainable workloads, AWS sustainability pillar, and Google Cloud design for sustainability recommendations. One should follow these frameworks to design software that is efficient, resilient, and adaptable.
- Measure and mitigate carbon footprint. Incorporate features in software that help track, monitor, or reduce the carbon emissions of IT products and processes. Examples of such measures could be, electricity consumption, hardware utilization, data size, and data distance are all carbon proxies. Use tools like Microsoft’s Cloud Sustainability Calculator or Google’s Carbon Footprint Dashboard to estimate and optimize cloud carbon emissions of websites or applications based on various parameters. Examples of similar online tools, are Website Carbon Calculator or Greenhouse Gas Protocol. Integrate using APIs like WattTime or Tomorrow to access real-time data on grid emissions and shift workloads to cleaner times or regions.?
- Leverage and contribute to open-source tools. Find suitable tools and methods that can help measure and optimize the carbon footprint of software, such as carbon proxies, development tools, online calculators, etc. For instance, one can use or improve CO2.js library or Cloud Carbon Footprint, a tool for measuring and monitoring cloud carbon emissions; which can be integrated with conventional business software. If possible, contribute technical skills to open-source projects or initiatives that aim to measure, monitor, or mitigate environmental impacts. ?
- Integrate AI/ML to discover and optimize. Another way to make software greener is to use artificial intelligence or machine learning to improve environmental sustainability in various sectors such as manufacturing, energy, agriculture, healthcare, and buildings.?Build and use AI/ML to optimize processes, reduce waste, enhance efficiency, and discover new solutions for sustainability challenges.?
There are many more resources of information and inspiration to explore and discover that can help deepen knowledge and skills in sustainability, such as:?
- The Principles of Sustainable Software Engineering and Principles of Green Software Engineering?are core sets of competencies that help you define, build, and run sustainable software applications.?
- The Green Software Foundation is a non-profit organization that provides guidance, tools, and resources for green software development.?
- The Sustainable Software Engineering blog is a platform for sharing patterns, practices, guidance, and stories to help developers make an impact within software development.?
- The Approaches to Software Sustainability guide provides different strategies for preserving and maintaining software over time.?
Sustainability is not only a responsibility but also an opportunity for us to create innovative solutions that can improve our quality of life and protect our planet. There are many more possibilities and opportunities for developers to create software that supports the environment. It requires careful and intentional planning to make a difference and should be integrated early in the software development lifecycle. Otherwise, it may require rework and architectural changes later on.?#sustainability #greensoftware #cloud #esg #softwaredevelopment
