Why green electricity is not enough

[suchona.kani.z]

The power consumption of a computer can be measured using standard household devices, but it is more difficult with smartphones due to the temporary storage in batteries. If our software is not just a client application, but a distributed system and is distributed across many servers in various data centers, uses third-party services and communicates over the Internet, then we are talking about the type of software that we use every day today and which makes up a significant part of the relevant software. This difficult measurement, as well as the outsourcing of resource-intensive processes to remote data centers, mean that neither consumers nor decision-makers in companies can estimate the ecological footprint of the software they use.

CO2 emissions
Since we know that our electricity consumption in Germany is not yet completely covered by renewable energy sources - according to the Federal Environment Agency , it was around 41 percent last year - this electricity consumption also has an impact on ecological sustainability. To assess the environmental impact of electricity consumption, the CO2 (equivalent) emissions belgium consumer email list caused are usually considered. These are calculated from the product of the electricity consumed and its CO2 intensity. For example, just creating a large reusable machine learning model for speech processing can emit 284 tons of CO2 - as much as 600 years of continuous Netflix streaming produces. You can also find some of the most important key figures on the environmental impact of software on our digital sustainability website .

e-waste
Another major environmental factor - in addition to electricity consumption - is the production and disposal of hardware. Servers, smartphones, routers and all the mice, keyboards and other accessories that we produce to run software. With hardware, in addition to the emission of greenhouse gases, other dimensions of ecological sustainability come into play, such as ecotoxicology for the disposal of e-waste. E-waste - or simply electronic waste - makes up the fastest growing share of waste worldwide, around 14 percent of which is generated in companies in Germany.