Software, as a basis of the Internet, has a significant influence on energy consumption, energy efficiency, and the useful life of hardware, and therefore on the energy and resource consumption of the Internet. Despite its great importance, general regulation or even recommendations for sustainable software are still in its infancy. Legal requirements for energy efficiency exist neither in Europe nor in Germany. Instead of binding regulations, Germany offers e.g. the option of a voluntary “Blue Angel” certification. The Blue Angel for “resource- and energy-efficient software products” of the German Federal Environment Agency is already an important step forward. It documents that software uses hardware resources sparingly, is energy-efficient, can run on older hardware, and can be updated over the long term. In addition, certified software is characterized by a high degree of transparency and autonomy. In order to provide the tools for environmentally friendly and energy-aware programming already in the training of programmers, additionally the development and initiation of university curricula recommendations is essential. Various studies and surveys have come to the conclusion that the ICT sector's share of global energy consumption in 2020 ranged between 1% and 3.2%.2 Forecasts assume that this share may rise to as much as 23% in 2030.3 Despite these very high figures, sustainability and resource conservation are currently taken into account in only a few IT projects. A brief survey of Bitkom members revealed that for 23% of the companies surveyed, the topic of sustainability plays no role at all in software development projects. At 70 percent of the companies, sustainability only plays a role in up to 25% of the software development projects.
To promote the discussion around Green Coding Concepts in general but also in the industry, as well as academia, we propose the following approach.

• Prof. Dr. Volker Wohlgemuth (Projektleitung)

• Dennis Maximilian Junger (Projektmitarbeiter_in)

Internet Society Foundation

Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V.

Umweltcampus Birkenfeld

Projektförderung