Green Software Foundation
Posted: Sat Jan 25, 2025 10:18 am
German Informatics Society (GI) At the end of 2021, the GI's sustainability working group presented the first version of the sustainability criteria for digital platforms. As you will notice in the course of this article, very few of those involved consider sustainability in isolation in relation to environmental impacts, but mostly in a holistic manner and also taking social aspects such as digital participation or the common good into account. In addition to more technical aspects - such as platform independence, low energy consumption or the longevity of software - criteria such as appropriate default settings, accessibility and autonomy of use are also required. Other aspects suggested by the catalogue of criteria are freely accessible software, data economy, minimal tracking and appropriate online advertising.
The Green Software Foundation was launched in spring 2022 and has summarized some of the key measures for ecologically sustainable software development with its Principles of Green Software Engineering . Although ireland consumer email list the principles are currently at a level that does not fully do justice to the topic in the long term, the foundation already has a working group whose goal is to develop a set of standards for sustainable software. The working group's initial work results can be found, for example, in the Software Carbon Intensity Specification .
Sustainable Digital Infrastructure Alliance
As a representative from the German-speaking region and with a focus on infrastructure and data centers, the Sustainable Digital Infrastructure Alliance (SDIA) is also working on a catalog of criteria. The aim of the SDIA is to develop a label that can be used to evaluate cloud infrastructure providers - especially in the context of the ongoing trend towards migration to the cloud. Since servers account for around 14 percent of the emissions generated when a website is accessed, cloud infrastructure must become more transparent. Another positive effect of such a label can also be the exposure of dangerous and vague claims about supposedly green hosting that border on greenwashing. The development of the label appears to be in a very early phase, but the first challenges identified - such as the fact that servers are currently selected primarily based on performance - indicate that things could get serious here.
The Green Software Foundation was launched in spring 2022 and has summarized some of the key measures for ecologically sustainable software development with its Principles of Green Software Engineering . Although ireland consumer email list the principles are currently at a level that does not fully do justice to the topic in the long term, the foundation already has a working group whose goal is to develop a set of standards for sustainable software. The working group's initial work results can be found, for example, in the Software Carbon Intensity Specification .
Sustainable Digital Infrastructure Alliance
As a representative from the German-speaking region and with a focus on infrastructure and data centers, the Sustainable Digital Infrastructure Alliance (SDIA) is also working on a catalog of criteria. The aim of the SDIA is to develop a label that can be used to evaluate cloud infrastructure providers - especially in the context of the ongoing trend towards migration to the cloud. Since servers account for around 14 percent of the emissions generated when a website is accessed, cloud infrastructure must become more transparent. Another positive effect of such a label can also be the exposure of dangerous and vague claims about supposedly green hosting that border on greenwashing. The development of the label appears to be in a very early phase, but the first challenges identified - such as the fact that servers are currently selected primarily based on performance - indicate that things could get serious here.