Guest article: Green code is an invisible yet concrete act of sustainability

The IT industry has long been considered a pioneer in responsibility. It is true that diversity, equality, and inclusion (DEI), which are related to the social dimension of sustainability, have become an established part of the everyday life of IT companies and have been reflected in concrete actions through accessibility. At the same time, however, when it comes to the environmental dimension of responsibility, the situation is quite different. Many people are surprised to learn that, internationally speaking, the IT sector is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than the aviation industry.

How is this possible, and what is the cause?

Janne Kalliola has long been an entrepreneur in the technology sector, and alongside his work, he is writing a doctoral thesis at Aalto University on energy consumption in services.

"I became interested in green coding in 2019, and around the same time, we were having discussions at Sitra about the sustainability of the IT industry. Although digital development has always been seen as fundamentally responsible, in reality, emissions that burden the environment have only increased in the IT sector," Janne shares.

However, the carbon footprint produced by digital services is difficult to grasp because emissions come from small streams and are related to choices made by both companies and individuals.

For comparison, there are several hundred thousand aircraft worldwide, and their emissions are easy to comprehend. Flying can also be reduced through personal choices, or it is possible to give it up altogether. Digital services, on the other hand, extend to both work and free time, and involve billions of devices, all of which consume energy. This text is being written on one device and read on another. In addition to work use, entertainment use accounts for a significant proportion of portable device use.

"The power of one laptop can be compared to a light bulb, but when there are billions of devices and usage time is long, the impact multiplies. However, companies can greatly influence how much energy navigating their own digital services consumes."

Developers of digital services have a significant impact on their energy efficiency

In addition to work and entertainment use, corporate data storage increases the load. Most companies strive to operate in a data-driven manner, basing their decision-making on the information they collect. Large amounts of user data are collected and stored for long periods of time in cloud services to enable the best possible decisions.

However, transparency related to cloud services is quite limited: it's difficult to see where energy is consumed and which system requires the most resources.

"When purchasing services, customers don't always know to demand energy efficiency. According to estimates, the efficiency of running software could be increased relatively easily by as much as 50%. Upon further examination, the figure may be closer to 80%. In practice, this means that every other server could be unnecessary if we just know how to do things smarter."

Nitor's Pasi Niemi has seen how developers play a key role in designing IT systems to minimise environmental impact.

"Many companies are not yet able to specify what kind of solutions they want to implement in their own systems to make them as long-lasting and low-emission as possible. This is why it's important for software developers to build their own expertise so they can offer energy-efficient, comprehensive solutions," Pasi concludes.

"In my experience, environmentally responsible software development produces a fit-for-purpose result with the lowest possible energy consumption," Janne continues.

So what needs to be considered here? Janne and Pasi highlight four principles to get you started:

1) From an environmental perspective, the best approach is to do necessary things as simply as possible

The simpler a digital service is, the fewer resources it requires and the less it burdens the environment. Investing in usability reduces errors and the number of steps needed to use the service.

The same applies to data: invest in quality over quantity. Nowadays, everyone wants to base their decisions on data as precisely as possible; however, data is often collected and stored unnecessarily. So, think about what you actually need and for how long. Does your company need the collected data for weeks, months, or years? Storing large data masses consumes a lot of energy and is expensive. Additionally, it's always a security risk. We therefore encourage considering what amount of data is sufficient for making quality decisions.

2) Efficient software costs less and consumes less energy

Software consists of a series of loops. The length of the loops (algorithms) and the number of repetitions (data size) determine how much energy is consumed. In addition to designing the processes surrounding the software to be as simple as possible, there are multiple differences in language and architecture choices.

Ultimately, however, the client makes the technology choices related to their own services. Software developers can present alternatives and explain what using each technology means in terms of environmental burden. These choices are also reflected in the size of the bill, as demanding efficient solutions and the ability to eliminate unnecessary elements often extends software lifespan and significantly reduces a company's costs.

3) Choose when runs and analyses are performed

All energy produces emissions, but the amount varies. It is also a fact that, on a global level, energy consumption is growing faster than the production of renewable energy sources. At the same time, however, there are differences between geographical areas and times of day: where electricity is cheaper, it is often also cleaner (in Europe). Timing data analysis and artificial intelligence training to moments when the emission intensity of electricity production is low, for example, when the share of renewable energy is high, can reduce the climate impact of these processes. This can reduce the carbon footprint without the end user noticing any change.

4) Make sustainability part of procurement and daily operations

Sustainability may be part of sales conversations, but it's easier to forget in implementation if there is no one responsible for the energy efficiency and sustainability of IT. We firmly believe that sustainability will become a quality requirement during implementation in the future, in the same way as accessibility. In practice, it affects two things:

1. Skills development: When working with a client, it's important for software developers to understand where the carbon footprint of digital services originates. In software development, the greatest impact on emissions often occurs during service use, and, among other things, guiding consumption towards cleaner energy periods can help mitigate this impact.

2. Procurement process for digital services or software development: Purchasing process for digital services or software development: Raise the bar during the proposal phase! Ask IT consultants to demonstrate that they understand how modern software consumes energy and what can be done about it

"In addition to energy consumption, the length of the software lifecycle matters. I feel that elegant solutions are long-lasting, efficient, and responsible. A well-functioning system doesn't need to be fixed or replaced unnecessarily," Janne adds.

Key Takeaways

When starting to optimise the environmental burden of digital services, Janne and Pasi summarise the most important things to remember:

1. Select a partner with expertise and experience in developing sustainable digital services. This expertise can be demanded, and it can also be found on the market. When you partner with an experienced professional, you don't have to worry about every little thing yourself. At the same time, your own organisation's expertise will also grow.

2. Invest in sustainable software development now. It will quite certainly be mainstream in the future, faster than you might think.

3. Find out where your systems' energy is being consumed. This way, you can cut work where the impact is greatest instead of trying to optimise some part of the service that ultimately doesn't produce a significant burden. If you're not familiar with this information yet, it's easy to discover with the help of an expert.

4. Consider energy consumption in calculations for new systems. When considering platform modernisation, energy consumption is an important factor for renewal. In addition to making the system more efficient and faster, it can be made much more energy-efficient with the same effort.

5. Plan carefully: By investing time in the planning phase, you can achieve significant savings. What features are cut must be an informed decision.

The current CSRD directive obliges (and encourages) companies to report on their sustainability. Since IT companies' emissions primarily fall under Scope 3 of the GHG protocol, they remain largely invisible to the general public. However, there's plenty of work to be done in the environmental dimension of sustainability, and skilled professionals are needed. The old cliché, which we have long been aware of in consumer behaviour, also applies in the digital context: do less, but do it better.