Digitalization and software have made our lives easier and made our operations many times more efficient over the past decades. Data centers consume two to three percent of the planet’s total electricity usage now. It has considerable CO2 footprint. Various ICT solutions are responsible for 4–10 percent of annual electricity consumption and 3–5 percent of global greenhouse emissions (ICT industry climate and environmental strategy, 2021).
By one estimate, consumption could jump to as much as 13 percent of the world’s total electricity demand by 2030. Everyone seems to be slowly convinced of the existence of climate change and the necessity of reacting to it. Climate change and the prevailing energy crisis in today’s world force us to examine all energy consumption. The ICT sector must also participate in ways to save energy, because all information processing, presentation and transfer consumes energy.
Technology for massive reductions in environmental footprint already exists – many try to optimize data centers PAU with different approaces and cleaner power generation. Green Data: The Next Step to Zero-Emissions Data Centers article mentions that as cloud computing becomes more energy efficient and increasingly relies on renewable sources it can help. The data center industry needs to think about this. Some players already do that.
But can coders help in making IT industry more green? Does anyone talk about writing greener software instead of bloatware? Does anyone talk to think that the features and all the processing of data makes sense?
Earlier as the speed of devices has continuously increased, it has been possible to implement software without worrying about efficiency. And while software grows in size, so does the amount of energy they consume. Software already reduces emissions by streamlining or optimizing other operations. This is called a carbon fingerprint. The IT industry has reduced unnecessary intermediate steps in processes or minimized the use of paper and printing. However, it cannot justify the inefficiency of the software and the growing energy consumption.
Yes, there is talking on going on green code and green IT more on last few years. It is not always clear how each of us can influence the matter. Software development is an excellent example of an industry where the climate impact of work can vary greatly depending on work methods. The same end result can be achieved either climate-wise way or by using bloatware that causes a large climate burden. The same end results can can be often achieved efficiently or ineffectively, in which case it is smart from the point of view of the Earth to choose an efficient implementation.
There is a lot of reckless data usage. The computing, storage and data transfer capacity of digital devices have developed in a way that no other field of technology has been able to do. Massive data transfer in use nowadays means massive extra energy consumption. In the fiber backbone network, to which the computer is often connected, the energy consumption of the transmitted bit is still reasonable. On the other hand, the mobile network clearly consumes more energy to transfer a bit, up to a thousand times more per bit. Why should smartphones be capable of computing at the level of supercomputers, when they mainly use various social media services or play games? Of course, there is a need for graphics for a better user experience, and because of ads, the pages are free for their users. Overall, however, the number of ads and graphics is far too large and poorly optimized.
It is clear that, on average, various websites have way too much data behind them. The kind of data that consumes a lot of energy, but often does not provide exceptional added value from the user’s point of view. In last 10 years the the typical size of web pages created for computers has increased by 500 percent and for mobile devices by more than 1000 percent. As a result, the size of a typical page for both mobile devices and computers is the same, around 2 megabytes. So what does this mean in practice? Overload and massive energy consumption: The data must first be stored on servers, transferred over the data network and processed in the terminal devices. The data is also typically disposable, i.e. it is loaded again when the website is visited later. And much of this data transfer is unnecessary. Optimizing websites can be done. These savings can be up to 50 percent of the traffic caused by the service. In some cases, it is possible to achieve savings of 90 percent, so that the end user does not see any difference. Many online stores have already noticed that the optimized pages work faster for the users, and that the faster their business is, the better their turnover is. If optimization starts to be done more widely, the consequences could be downright revolutionary.
In software development, highly automated processes are available in cloud services, data transfer and SaaS products. Unfortunately, this mode of operation – at least in its current form – limits our visibility to both our energy consumption and climate emissions. We need to gain knowledge how much much your systems consumes and why. In addition to knowledge, we must also have a view of the meaning of knowledge. A climate-wise coder needs a feel for key quantities. If our server consumes a kilowatt-hour of energy, is it a lot or a little?
Fortunately, research and discussion about the climate impacts of the ICT sector has already started and gained good momentum a few years ago. In Finland, it has been investigated e.g. in TIEKE ry’s Green ICT project (2021-2023), in which they promoted lower-carbon digital service production and climate-wise procurement expertise of companies and the public sector in the Uusimaa region in Finland.
Their web pages give information how to move forward on green IT. The project estimated that in many cases the footprint of an individual ICT service can be reduced by up to 90 percent with the right measures.
It is possible to minimize the inefficiency of the software using the so-called with green coding. Green code is an attitude or thought model towards coding, which results in optimized and resource-efficient code. At the same time, it should maximize value and minimize energy consumption. The opposite of green code is waste – energy-consuming activities that do not produce value. Green coding especially affects energy consumption. It aims to minimize both the time spent on data processing and the amount of data transferred, because both of them consume energy and cause climate emissions. Sustainable software engineering is better for the environment and can help a business’s bottom line. Those working in software development should think more about the carbon footprint of the lines of code they write.
Janne Kalliola has written an excellent book, Vihreä Koodi / Green Code that covers the topic what is green code. Green IT and code have already been talked about quite a lot in Finland over the past year. More software companies have started to talk about green coding, and to promote it. However, it has not yet been defined what the green code or eco-efficient systems are. The purpose of the book is not to unequivocally define green code and create a canon. Instead, the idea is to focus on describing patterns to stimulate thinking and presenting various solutions. By using these, anyone working on the matter can analyse their situation and identify the changes they need to make to become more environmentally friendly.
The Green Code book offers insights on the following topics:
- Why should code be green?
- The energy consumption of software
- Raiders of the lost efficiency
- Solutions on tackling lost efficiency
- Concrete recommendations for the main stakeholders involved in green software development, all the way from software developers to end-users
The second extended edition of the book also offers insights into the energy dynamics of AI, data usage, cryptocurrencies and the internet of things (IoT), while highlighting actionable strategies for sustainable growth.
The book is available in English with name Green Code at
https://www.exove.com/green-code/
You can download the original Vihreä Koodi in Finnish language at
https://www.exove.com/fi/vihrea-koodi/
Links to sources:
TIEKE ry’s Green ICT project
https://www.codeo.fi/blogi/vihrea-ict/
https://www.epanorama.net/newepa/2012/04/18/how-clean-is-your-cloud-and-telecom/
https://www.exove.com/fi/vihrea-koodi/
https://www.exove.com/green-code/
https://punamusta.com/asiantuntija/vihrea-koodi-on-tulevaisuuden-itta/
Sustainable Software Engineering – What Is It And What You Need To Know
https://www.mustread.fi/artikkelit/ratkaisu-on-vihrea-koodi-monet-digitaaliset-palvelut-on-suunniteltu-huonosti-ja-ne-vievat-valtavasti-energiaa/
https://www.sytyke.org/kestava-kehitys/vihrea-koodi/
https://www.greencode.world/
https://www.cgi.com/fi/fi/blogi/mita-green-coding-on
https://blog.digia.com/green-code-energiaviisaampia-ratkaisuja-asiakkaitamme-ja-tulevaisuuttamme-varten
57 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.wri.org/insights/us-data-center-growth-impacts?hl=en-US
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/data-centers-and-water-consumption?hl=en-US
Tomi Engdahl says:
“This isn’t something we normally test for.” https://trib.al/J4JZt5W
Pipes Dreams
Meta’s AI Data Center Caught Infecting Town Water Supply With Deadly Bacteria
“This isn’t something we normally test for.”
https://futurism.com/health-medicine/meta-ai-data-center-pathogen-bacteria-water?fbclid=IwdGRjcAS5bGxjbGNrBLlsQmV4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkDDM1MDY4NTUzMTcyOAABHges5vQDaNZ0Xy97GSqpgnfgYqYWTYr9OUDVKhB_mLSlong7LvyFSUJzzR4Q_aem_qb0sFGqSOz4lEtmeQ5s-5w
With public anger at AI data centers boiling over, all it takes is one bad neighbor to get every data center in town locked out.
That’s the story unfolding in Cheyenne, Wyoming, where local officials are revoking waste-dumping privileges for every data center campus connected to municipal water services. As Cowboy State Daily reported, the Cheyenne Board of Public Utilities has rolled out a sweeping ban on fill-and-flush discharge, the process in which data centers flood their cooling systems with water before powering up for the first time.
That decision came after one bad actor, the Meta-affiliated data center company Goat Systems LLC, flooded local waste water pipes with fill-and-flush swill containing a rare and deadly bacterium known as Cupriavidus gilardii.
Though it seems nobody has contracted the potentially deadly bacterium as a result of Meta’s fill-and-flush, the city’s response to the incident underscores the degree to which people across the US are scrutinizing data centers — and the undeniable im
Tomi Engdahl says:
When looking at the numbers, comparing data center water consumption to total US water usage reveals a stark reality: nationwide, data centers are a drop in the bucket, but locally, they can act like a giant straw. On a macro level, all US data centers combined consume less water than the nation’s golf courses or the irrigation of a few large agricultural counties. Two-thirds of new data centers built since 2022 are located in regions already classified as water-stressed.
The total picture changes drastically depending on whether you look at direct water (used on-site for evaporative cooling) or indirect water (the massive amount of water consumed off-site by power plants generating electricity for the servers).
In places like Phoenix, Arizona or West Texas, adding a multi-gigawatt data center campus places immense pressure on local aquifers and municipal drinking water supplies.
Water-cooled facilities are highly energy-efficient but consume a lot water. Air-cooled facilities save water entirely but draw significantly more electricity, driving up power bills and indirect water consumption at the regional power plant.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The entire direct water footprint of all US data centers combined is equal to about 80 average-sized irrigated crop farms (like a standard corn or soybean operation in the Midwest).
The direct water consumption of the entire US data center industry could be matched by just 7 or 8 massive industrial crop farms in places like California’s Central Valley or the Texas Panhandle.
The US data center footprint is equivalent to roughly 6,000 to 8,000 non-irrigated family farms.
Agriculture accounts for nearly 40% of all water withdrawals in the United States, whereas data center cooling accounts for just 0.01% (US data centers directly consumed 17.4 billion gallons of water annually).
The takeaway: If you took the water used by just one large agricultural county in California or Arizona, it would easily match or exceed the direct cooling water consumed by every single data center in the United States combined.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google Hamina data center in Finland uses Zero Fresh Water for Cooling. The data center captures its excess server heat and pumps it directly into the city’s district heating network and excess goes into the Baltic Sea water.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Many modular units use direct-to-chip or immersion liquid cooling. Because the system is a tightly sealed, closed loop, the liquid recirculates indefinitely. This eliminates the need for massive evaporative cooling towers, slashing on-site freshwater consumption to near zero.
For modules that do use air, the airflow architecture is optimized.
Modular data centers could be in theory deployed exactly where the heat is needed. The modules can be built to capture the server exhaust heat directly from its sealed cooling loop and pumps it straight into the local water grid to heat buildings in cold climate locations.