What Is Green Software?

Date First Published: 16th February 2024

Topic: Computer Systems

Subtopic: Ethics & Sustainability

Article Type: Computer Terms & Definitions

Difficulty: Medium

Difficulty Level: 5/10

CONTENTS

Key Components Of Green Computing
Importance Of Green Computing
Challenges Of Green Computing

Learn about what green software is in this article.

Green software, also known as sustainable software is a type of software that is designed to minimise environmental impact. Green software tends to be faster, whilst using less energy, meaning lower energy costs and increased efficiency. Organisations that develop green software can build brand loyalty as consumers are becoming more aware of environmental issues and support organisations with green products, giving them a competitive advantage.

Like computer hardware, software can also contribute to environmental issues. Although the software itself doesn't directly consume energy, it influences the operation of computer hardware. This means that it indirectly impacts hardware's energy consumption and carbon emissions. Energy-inefficient software can have a major impact on energy consumption.

Principles Of Green Software

Green software is a relatively new area of green computing and brings together software development practices and hardware and data centre design. Some principles of green software include:

Carbon - Developers should build software that offers value to users while producing fewer carbon emissions. The three main activities that reduce the carbon emissions of software are energy efficiency, carbon awareness, and hardware efficiency.
Energy proportionality - The relationship between how much a device is used and the electricity the device uses is known as energy proportionality. The energy efficiency of the hardware should be maximised by ensuring a high rate of utilisation.
Networking - Sent and received data travels across multiple devices that are connected to the network. The goal is to reduce carbon emissions and increase the energy efficiency of the software by reducing the size of the data and how far it needs to travel across the network.
Carbon intensity - Companies should consume as much electricity as possible from renewable energy sources, which have lower carbon intensity.
Removing unused features, improving energy efficiency and making the software easier to maintain.