What is green software?
We have already talked about sustainable or ‘green’ DevOps in one of our previous articles. Today, we will be talking more about what green software is, its benefits, key concepts, and the best practices to build one…
Green software: what is it, key concepts, & best practices
Will you believe me if I say the applications on your mobile can cause global warming?
As unbelievable as it sounds, it is true. Let me explain how…
The applications or software on your mobile run on your mobile’s battery. You charge this battery with electricity supplied by electric power plants. Most of this electricity is generated from burning fossil fuels, which as a by-product, produce huge amounts of carbon in the form of CO2. And this CO2, as you might have heard, is the cause of climate change and global warming.
That said, the applications that you and I use are directly linked with environmental health.
So should we stop using or developing them?
No, because that would be impractical. This leaves us with the only option of reducing the impact by adopting sustainable measures.
Green software development is one of the steps that software companies around the world have taken to promote sustainability without compromising growth. Let’s first see what green software is in detail…
What is green software?
A software is called eco-friendly or ‘green’ if it uses minimum energy and produces minimum carbon throughout its creation and functioning. You might think that saving the environment is only possible at the cost of profit but that’s not so in the case of green software. Greening your software development process comes with multiple benefits which are as follows:
- Green software involves designing the software in such a way that it consumes minimal electricity. This also lowers the company’s carbon footprint and additionally, helps save on costs.
- Green software promotes efficient coding and simple architecture. Thus, it has a faster computational speed.
- In today’s world, many customers have started recognizing the importance of sustainable development. That said, greening your business improves brand reputation and gives a competitive edge.
Key concepts of green software
♦ Energy efficiency
From its development to its usage on the user’s end, software requires energy in the form of electricity. This electricity, as said before, comes from burning fossil fuels like coal and inevitably produces carbon dioxide.
Energy efficiency is about reducing electricity wastage and usage at every step of the software development process.
♦ Energy proportionality
Energy proportionality is the relationship between how much the device is used and how much electricity it uses. To understand this, let’s take an example given by Green Software Foundation – a computer drawing 100W electricity at 0% utilization, 180W at 50%, and 200W at 100%.
Image credits: https://learn.greensoftware.foundation/energy-efficiency/
From this graph, it’s clear that the electricity consumption of the device and its utilization are not proportional. The computer draws nearly as much electricity at 50% utilization as much as it would at 100%.
That said, instead of running multiple servers that are not fully utilized because of lesser traffic, it’s much more efficient to use a single server at its maximum capacity.
♦ Carbon intensity
Carbon intensity is the amount of carbon (as CO2) produced per kilowatt-hour (KWh) of electricity consumed. Electricity generated from thermal power plants that use fossil fuels is more carbon intensive (plus expensive) than the one generated in wind farms or solar power plants.
Unless your place is directly connected to a wind farm or solar power plant, you get a mix of electricity from low-carbon to high-carbon energy sources. This is because renewable energy is not assured all the time – winds may not blow always and the weather can be cloudy on some days. Thus, carbon intensity varies with climate, geographical location and time.
♦ Demand shifting & shaping
Demand shifting means hauling production when/where the carbon intensity is high and resuming when/where it is low. It involves spatial shifting (switching to a different geographical location) or temporal shifting (rescheduling the work).
On the other hand, demand shaping means modifying your own computation to match the current supply of resources. If the carbon intensity is high, reduce the usage at the cost of some performance and if the carbon intensity is low, increase the usage for high performance. Demand shaping also helps to save costs.
♦ Embodied carbon
Embodied carbon or embedded carbon is the amount of carbon produced during the manufacturing process of hardware plus its entire lifetime.
Image credits: The Energy and Carbon Footprint of the Global ICT and E&M Sectors 2010–2015
The above graph indicates that for most of the electronic devices that people use, like laptops, tablets and smartphones, the amount of embodied carbon (produced during manufacturing) is far more than the amount of electricity they consume during their entire lifetime.
That said, even before the device reaches the user, most of the carbon has already been produced during its production.
Measurement
Measuring your current status of carbon emission is the first step towards optimization. Greenhouse Gas (GHG) protocol and Software Carbon Intensity (SCI) are some methods of measuring the amount of carbon produced. Google’s Carbon Footprint is another tool that helps companies measure their carbon emissions based on their cloud usage.
Green software best practices
- Identify and control the features that consume higher power. Remove the less-used or unneeded ones.
- Implement an efficient caching mechanism to reduce data usage.
- Adaptive features like power-saving modes can help reduce energy consumption on the user’s end.
- Monitor the energy consumption of the software in real time and optimize accordingly.
- The choice of programming language and AI models also affects the energy efficiency of the software.
- Automation tools and cloud services with their auto-scaling capabilities help minimize wastage of resources. Prefer cloud providers that use renewable or greener energy at their data centers.
- Green coding practices like implementing lazy-loading and load-balancing further help in optimizing code quality for the environment.
Conclusion
Green software is the key to a more sustainable future in software development. By focusing on energy, and carbon efficiency, businesses can reduce their carbon footprint on the planet. Building green software is not just about environmental health, but it also improves the efficiency of the software and helps save costs. Moreover, such green and environment-conscious practices are integral to getting an edge in today’s competitive market.
