Chapter 09 · Sustainability & AISustainability & AI
Green software engineering
Definition
Software development practices that minimise the energy use and carbon emissions of applications across design, coding, deployment and operation.
References
This source provides part of the technical or institutional basis for the definition.
This source supports the explanation of how the term is applied, measured or governed in practice.
Overview
What it means
The discipline is coordinated by the Green Software Foundation, whose members publish patterns and tooling: energy- and carbon-aware design, efficient architectures, demand shaping, and measurement embedded in development pipelines. Its Software Carbon Intensity specification became ISO/IEC 21031 in 2024.
How it is used
Practitioners apply it by profiling software energy use, choosing efficient languages and architectures, scheduling workloads for low-carbon periods, and making emissions a tracked quality attribute alongside performance and cost.
Why it matters
Hardware efficiency gains have historically been consumed by software growth; green software engineering addresses the demand side directly. For organisations reporting digital emissions, it turns software from an unmeasured driver into a managed one.