Software can have an impact on the service life and energy consumption. It’s possible to measure the environmental impacts that are caused by cloud services.
Marina Köhn spoke about the environmental impact of software and cloud services at OOP 2022.
So far, the development of computer science has always followed the same pattern, Köhn explained, where new faster technology is developed, and software exploits the faster processors, the greater memory and data transfer volume. This begins a spiral that leads to equipment becoming obsolete because it can no longer meet the increased performance requirements imposed by the software, Köhn argued.
The software architecture design will determine how much hardware and electricity is required. Software can be economical or wasteful with hardware resources, Köhn stated:
Depending on how intelligently the program is programmed, it may require less or more processor power.
Köhn mentioned that the greatest challenge lies not in the technical-physical area, but primarily in the economic and organizational conditions that lead to the premature failure of software. It could be entire product systems. For example, the discontinuation or lack of compatibility between systems. She stated that the quality of software is increasingly important in determining the functionality, reliability, and service life for devices.
Germany’s Federal Environment Agency (Umweltbundesamt) has created a method to assess the environmental footprint for applications.
Our method records the environmental expenditures for the production and operation of data centers in four impact categories.
- Raw material expenditure (ADP).
- Greenhouse gas emissions (GWP)
- Cumulative energy expenditure (KEA)
- Water consumption
The first step was to apply the method to cloud services. The environmental effort calculated in this manner is distributed to the individual clouds services using allocation rules. Each service receives a percentage of the environmental impact of the data center, Köhn said.
InfoQ interviewed Marina KöhnSoftware development has an environmental impact.
InfoQ: How does obsolescence of software-related hardware impact the life span of consumer goods
Marina Köhn: The number of smart electrical devices and connected systems in our daily lives and in our homes has increased rapidly over the past several years. This increases the risk that software obsolescence can occur, which is the software-related decrease in the useful life of technically functional devices.
InfoQ: How does a blue Angel label work with software products?
Köhn: The Blue Angel has been the German government’s environmental label for 41 years.
The Blue Angel environmental label Software Products that are resource- and energy-efficientThese products use hardware resources in an efficient way and consume very little energy. These software products also stand out because they are transparent and allow users to use the software more freely.
InfoQ: What’s your definition of green cloud computing?
Köhn: Unfortunately, there is not enough data to support this statement. Our research project has produced a method that can be used for information about the environmental impacts of cloud services. The results of our research on the environmental effects cloud services have only been applied to the specific case studies and are not universally applicable to other cloud services. To make the results comparable, it is necessary that the methodology be applied to a large number cloud services or data centers.
