A number of software companies have banded together to form to Green Software Foundation, to address the global climate crisis. “As an industry, we can come together to accomplish more,” founding members Accenture, GitHub, Microsoft and ThoughtWorks said in a joint statement.
The Green Software Foundation is a non-profit established together with the Linux Foundation and the Joint Development Foundation Projects. It aims to build an ecosystem of people, standards, tooling and leading practices for building green software, and help the software industry contribute to the ICT sector’s broader targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 45 percent by 2030, in line with the Paris Climate Agreement.
The group also includes Goldman Sachs and non-profits such as Leaders for Climate Action, Watt Time and The Green Web Foundation, and hopes to attract more members. It will specifically focus on growing the field of green software engineering, contributing to standards for the industry, and working together to reduce the carbon emissions of software.
Data centres around the world already account for 1 percent of global electricity demand, and are expected to reach 3-8 percent over the next decade, making it “imperative” to address as an industry, they added during Microsoft’s annual Build Developers Conference. The announcement follows the creation of the Eco Rating label for mobile phones, announced earlier this week by Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefonica, Telia Company and Vodafone.
