Coding against climate change – Sustainable software engineering

Mankind is releasing enormous quantities of greenhouse gases, which are continuously heating our planet’s atmosphere. So far, unfortunately, it’s not so good. But we as developers can’t do much about it anyway, after all, we only produce code, and that doesn’t hurt anyone. Isn’t that right? Of course, it’s not quite that simple. The energy that powers our servers and sends our data around the globe has to come from somewhere. Even if the share of regenerative energy sources is increasing, every year counts if we want to limit global warming to a halfway tolerable level. As software developers, we can do a lot more than run our laptops in energy-saving mode and the IDE in dark mode. Besides the obvious idea of using more efficient algorithms (whatever that means), the system architecture and infrastructure play a significant role. And if we think outside the box, there are also some opportunities in product design to reduce the carbon footprint of our users. So, problem solved? Not quite. Where do we need the help of the big players, where might the government need to act, and do we also need to change the way consumers think? These are questions we must and want to address.

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