Sustainable Software Engineering
As digital services and software systems grow in scale and complexity, their environmental and social impacts are becoming increasingly significant. For instance, the electricity consumption in the ICT sector accounts for approximately 2-3% of global greenhouse gas emissions, amounting to 1.0-1.7 gigatons of CO₂ equivalents.
Sustainable software engineering addresses these challenges by considering not only functional and economic requirements but also ecological and social aspects throughout the software’s life cycle.
This involves questions like:
· How much energy and resources does software consume during its whole lifecycle — from development, to operation, and disposal?
· What standards, methods, and metrics help us assess and improve software sustainability holistically?
This new series aims to highlight key research papers and resources that tackle these questions and open up new perspectives on building and evaluating more sustainable digital services.
As an introduction to the topic, we recommend:
„Development and evaluation of a reference measurement model for assessing the resource and energy efficiency of software products and components—Green Software Measurement Model (GSMM)” by Guldner et al. (2024):
This paper provides an overview of the field and is a great starting point for anyone looking to understand current research trends, key topics, and open challenges in sustainable software engineering. As there was previously no reference model for measuring the energy and resource consumption of software, the Green Software Measurement Model (GSMM) was developed. Thus, the GSMM serves as a framework that integrates diverse approaches into a coherent structure, enabling consistent and comparable assessments of software-related environmental impacts.
Additionally, the GSMM is designed to assist with future research and practical application by enabling measurements for specific use cases. This gives stakeholders the opportunity to better incorporate sustainable software engineering into their daily work and therefore increase resource and energy efficiency for instance.
The Blauer Engel for Software Eco-Certification (incl. Background Report):
This official German eco-label for software expands the focus beyond energy consumption and carbon emissions. It introduces a multi-dimensional framework for assessing software sustainability, including aspects like resource efficiency, transparency, longevity, and user autonomy. A valuable reference for anyone aiming to develop, evaluate, or certify software in a holistic, sustainability-oriented way.
As a complementary resource: The Hugging Face Leaderboard:
This leaderboard makes energy consumption metrics for machine learning models publicly visible and comparable. Although the underlying method is intentionally simplified, it provides a valuable sense of scale and allows for first-time comparisons of energy use across similar software models. It’s a good example of how transparency in digital services can be made accessible and actionable.
