apidays Singapore 2023 - Changing the culture of building software, Aman Dhamija, Goldman Sachs & Green Software Foundation

© 2021 Green Software Foundation
Introduction
to Green Software

Creative Commons | Green Software Foundation 2

What is Green
Software?
• Carbon efficient
Software
• Using less physical
resources
• Using less energy
• Using energy more
intelligently

What makes software green?
6
Energy Efficiency
Consume the least amount
of electricity possible
Hardware Efficiency
Use the least amount of
embodied carbon possible
Carbon Awareness
Do more when the electricity is
clean and less when it’s dirty

Carbon efficiency
7
Carbon is emitted when running
software, so let’s extract maximum
value for every gram of carbon
emitted
A carbon-efficient application emits
the least amount of carbon possible.

Energy Efficiency
8

Is electricity clean?
9

Energy proportionality
Relationship between electricity
consumed and utilization is not linear
The more we utilize a computer, the
more efficient a computer becomes at
converting electricity to computing
operations

Carbon Awareness
11

How clean or dirty is electricity?
12
gCO2e/kWh
CO2eq
(carbon dioxide equivalent)

Varies by location
13

Varies by time
14

Do more when the carbon intensity is
low and do less when the carbon
intensity is high.
Reduces emissions AND helps
accelerate the energy transition
Demand, Spatial and/or Temporal Shifting
Do more when the carbon intensity is low
and do less when the carbon intensity is
high.
Reduces emissions AND helps accelerate
the energy transition
Carbon Aware Computing

Hardware Efficiency
16

● Everything emitted carbon in its creation and in its destruction
● This is called the embodied carbon of a device.
● Since our goal is to be carbon-efficient, our goal is also to be hardware-efficient
since hardware is a proxy for carbon.
Hardware is a proxy for carbon
17

Embodied emissions are significant
18
For most end user devices the embodied carbon is greater than the
lifetime emissions from it’s consumption of electricity.

● Extending lifespan: This is most applicable to end user devices like mobiles, tablets.
● Increasing utilization: This is most applicable to cloud computing.
Two broad categories of hardware efficiency
19

If your device has 1000 kg of embodied carbon and the expected lifespan is 2 years.
Then that’s 500 kg per year.
If you extended the lifespan of your device to 3 years then it would be 333kg per year.
Extending the lifespan of hardware
20

Instead of 5 servers with embodied carbon of 1000 kg each running at 20% utilisation,
with the total embodied carbon of 5000kg
Have one server with embodied carbon of 1000kg running at 100% utilisation.
Increasing the utilisation
21

Recap
22
Energy Efficiency
Consume the least amount
of electricity possible
Hardware Efficiency
Use the least amount of
embodied carbon possible
Carbon Awareness
Do more when the electricity is
clean and less when it’s dirty

Measuring:
What you can't measure,
you can't improve

There are a couple of ways of measuring
software for emissions:
● Greenhouse Gas (GHG) protocol
● Software Carbon Intensity (SCI)
Specification
24
Methods

What scope do my emissions fall into?
25
GHG Scope 2 3
Private Cloud Energy Embodied
Public Cloud - Energy + Embodied
Hybrid Cloud Some Energy Some Energy + Embodied
Front End - Energy + Embodied

● Do you know everywhere your your software is being used?
● Do you have the capability to track who is using your software?
● Do you have permission to track who is using your software?
Is it possible to calculate a total?
26

Software Carbon Intensity (SCI)
27

Case Study:
How UBS measured and reduced the carbon
emissions of their risk platform
28

UBS and Microsoft used the carbon-aware-sdk to validate the impact of time-shifting on
the execution of their Azure Batch workloads from ACQA, their risk platform called
Advanced Compute Quantum Analytics.
Here is their 4 step process:
1. Measure carbon intensity of a sample workload processed in the past
2. Determine optimal forecasted carbon intensity
3. Measure carbon intensity of the optimized workload
4. Use step 1-3 to identify potential savings over time

Time Shifting

Questions
32

apidays Singapore 2023 - Changing the culture of building software, Aman Dhamija, Goldman Sachs & Green Software Foundation

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