Awesome

Green Software

Research, tools, code, libraries, and training for building applications that emit less carbon into our atmosphere.

An awesome list created and managed by the Open Source Working Group in the Green Software Foundation.

Disclaimer

This list is created for informational purposes only and any links do not constitute an endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by the Green Software Foundation, its member organizations, or contributors to the list.

THESE MATERIALS ARE PROVIDED “AS IS.” The parties expressly disclaim any warranties (express, implied, or otherwise), including implied warranties of merchantability, non-infringement, fitness for a particular purpose, or title, related to the materials. The entire risk of implementing or otherwise using the materials is assumed by the implementer and user. IN NO EVENT WILL THE PARTIES BE LIABLE TO ANY OTHER PARTY FOR LOST PROFITS OR ANY FORM OF INDIRECT, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OF ANY CHARACTER FROM ANY CAUSES OF ACTION OF ANY KIND WITH RESPECT TO THIS DELIVERABLE OR ITS GOVERNING AGREEMENT, WHETHER BASED ON BREACH OF CONTRACT, TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE), OR OTHERWISE, AND WHETHER OR NOT THE OTHER MEMBER HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

Contents

• Dev / Tooling
  • AI
    • Carbon
    • Energy
  • Cloud based
    • AWS
    • Azure
    • Google
    • Multicloud
  • Code based
  • General purpose
    • Emissions
    • Energy
    • Extensions
  • OS based
    • Android
    • Linux
    • Web
    • Windows
• Organizations
• Courses
• Articles / Books / Research
  • Articles
  • Books
  • Research
    • Artificial Intelligence
    • Blockchain
    • Computation
    • Crypto
    • Data Centers
    • Emissions
    • Programming Languages
    • Quantum Computing
    • Streaming
    • Web

Dev / Tooling

AI

AI Carbon

• Experiment Impact Tracker Library Calculates carbon cost of ML job

AI Energy

• Beaker (Allen Institue For AI) Captures GPU power inside a container
• carbontracker
• RAPL in Action: Experiences in Using RAPL for Power Measurements
• Tool for tracking and predicting the energy consumption and carbon footprint of training deep learning models as described in Anthony et al. (2020)
• FedZero is a federated learning system for zero-carbon distributed AI training. It is the successor of Lowcarb which won the GSF CarbonHack 2022. Related Paper

Cloud-based

AWS

• Customer Carbon Footprint Tool for AWS
• Green Cost Explorer A climate related spend analysis for AWS.

Azure

• Microsoft Emissions Impact Dashboard

Google

• Carbon Footprint

• Cloud Jewels Blog: Cloud Jewels: Estimating kWh in the Cloud

  OVHcloud

• OVHcloud Carbon Calculator

Multicloud

• Cloud Carbon Footprint An open-source cloud energy and carbon emissions measurement tool.
• Green Metrics Tool A free open-source (FOSS) tool to measure the energy / CO2 consumption of your software architecture.
• kube-green A simple open-source k8s addon that automatically shuts down (some of) your resources when you don't need them.
• Carbonifer Command Line Tool to control carbon emission of your cloud infrastructure.
• Gaia Gen A SaaS solution for monitoring and reporting cloud emissions (there is a cost associated with this solution).

Code based

• codecarbon.io Python : Track and reduce CO2 emissions from your computing
• CAST Highlight Automatically analyze application source code to identify green deficiencies and improve green impact.
• JoularJX Java: Software power monitoring at the source code level in real-time.
• Kernel Tuner an auto-tuner capable of optimizing GPU code for energy efficiency.
• oaklean.io Visualize and optimize the energy consumption of your JavaScript/TypeScript applications. Using a VSCode extension and integration with test frameworks, the system identifies energy-intensive code sections and suggests eco-friendly alternatives.
• Tracarbon Tracarbon tracks your device's energy consumption and calculates your carbon emissions using your location
• ecoCode A SonarQube plugin for PHP, Python, Java, and JavaScript, providing static code analyzers to highlight code structures that may have a negative ecological impact.
• energy-consumption-measuring-toolkit Energy Consumption Measuring Toolkit for Python Applications

General purpose

Emissions

• Carbon AppInsights An Azure Functions-based solution for logging emissions data for Azure regions from Electricity Maps to Azure Monitor for alerting triggers and automated actions.
• Carbon Aware SDK A Web API and command line for obtaining unified forecast and historical power grid emissions data based on location and time, to help build Carbon Aware software.
• Carbon Aware Computing Hangfire Extension A Hangfire extension to schedule tasks with carbon awareness in mind. The best point in time is calculated based on emission forecasts to get a window with a minimal grid carbon intensity.
• Carbon Aware Computing - Tools & Free forecast data The goal of this project is to provide developers with hassle-free, easy-to-use, ready-to-run tools for carbon-aware computing. The software contains a NuGet-Package, Powershell-Commandlets, and a live instance of the SDK. An open data carbon forecast for Europe is available as in the JSON-Carbon SDK-compatible format.
• PSElectricityMaps A PowerShell Module for retrieving current carbon emissions data for power grids with a free account on ElectricityMaps / CO2signal.
• PSWattTime A PowerShell Module for retrieving current carbon emissions data for power grids with a free account on WattTime.org.

Energy

• CO2Scope Solution to monitor in real-time the CO2 emissions of IT services, virtual machines, and servers
• Eco-CI Continuous Integration Energy Estimation A plugin for GitHub Actions / GitLab that measures your CI runs and estimates their energy use.
• Kepler (Kubernetes-based Efficient Power Level Exporter) uses eBPF to probe energy-related system stats and exports as Prometheus metrics
• Hardware Sentry Standard OpenTelemetry agent that exposes the energy usage and temperatures of servers, network, and storage systems in data centers
• PowerJoular Monitor, in real-time, the power consumption of software and hardware components.
• scaphandre Power measurement (bare metal hosts, prometheus, within a docker container, etc)
• ML.ENERGY Leaderboard: How much energy do LLMs consume?
• Zeus: Deep Learning Energy Measurement and Optimization
• Vessim is a co-simulation testbed for carbon-aware applications and systems that connects domain-specific simulators for renewable power generation and energy storage with real software and hardware. It's been published at HotCarbon'24. Git Publsihed in 2024

Extensions

• GreenIT-Analysis The extension allows you to use your Dev Tools to measure the ecoIndex of a website and verify the application of web eco-design best practices defined by the "Collectif numérique responsible".

OS-based

Android

• ecoCode mobile A SonarQube plugin to highlight code structures that may have a negative ecological impact.
• PowDroid A lightweight CLI tool for measuring energy consumption at runtime (based on batterystats)

iOS

• ecoCode iOS A SonarQube plugin to highlight code structures that may have a negative ecological impact.

Linux

• FreeIPMI We can get the power consumption of a bare metal machine through the DCMI (IPMI extension).
• ipmitool We can get the power consumption of a bare metal machine through the DCMI (IPMI extension).
• PowerAPI A Linux software-defined power meter to estimate process-scale power consumption in real time.
• PowerTOP A Linux tool to diagnose issues with power consumption and power management.
• turbostress This tool generates load and outputs computer power metrics for this load.

Web

• Carbonalyser - TheShiftProject
• Carbonara - Digital4Better A custom element displaying web navigation carbon footprint
• Carbon Footprint of Sending Data An online calculator for estimating carbon emissions from network traffic, based on the Shift projects Lean ICT report.
• CO2.js An npm module for accessing the green web API, and estimating the carbon emissions from using digital services
• EcoGrader.com An online website carbon estimator.
• ecoIndex Estimates the carbon footprint of public Web sites and pages (in French)
• ec0lint Static code analysis tool providing hints for reducing the carbon footprint of websites.
• EcoMeter.org Analyse the website ecodesign maturity.
• Fruggr Evaluate the environmental and social efficiency of web and mobile applications.
• Globemallow.io Sustainable web development + design best practice reports. Analytics & Ad Blocker reduces the energy required for page load and protects your privacy.
• GreenFrame.io Calculate Carbon Footprint of website.
• GreenSpector
• Kastor.green Evaluate ecodesign compliance of websites and web applications.
• Website Carbon Calculator An online website carbon estimator.
• WeDeex - Chrome
• WeDeex - Edge
• Beacon Calculate the environmental impact of a web page.

Windows

• powercfg Blog : Measuring Your Application Power and Carbon Impact
• WeDeex Blog : We need a Yuka for electricity to ease the energy transition

Organizations

• Climate Action Tech
• Climate Change AI
• Digital Emissions
• Green Software Design Community
• Green Software Foundation
• Roll the Cloud
• SustainableIT.org
• The Green Grid
• The Green Web Foundation
• The Shift Project (Specifically, their Digital Sobriety / Lean ICT project)
• TimeForThePlanet

Courses

• The Principles of Sustainable Software Engineering
• Sustainable software engineering by openHPI
• Harvard ENVR S-186: Enabling a Sustainable Digital Transformation
• Curso de Desarrollo de software medioambientalmente sostenible (Green Software) Spanish

Articles / Books / Research

Articles

• Assessing the suitability of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol for calculation of emissions from public cloud computing workloads
• Beyond Single-Dimensional Metrics for Digital Sustainability
• Estimating the marginal carbon intensity of electricity with machine learning
• How to incorporate carbon-free energy for Google Cloud regions
• How we’re making Dropbox data centers 100% carbon neutral
• Power consumption of JPEG, WebP, and AVIF
• Software Carbon Intensity (Sci): Crafting A Standard
• The Staggering Ecological Impacts of Computation and the Cloud
• What are the greenest programming languages?
• What Do We Need To Build More Sustainable AI Systems?
• Why Should Sustainability Be A First-Class Consideration For AI Systems?

Books

• 101 Green Software: A Practical Guide for Developers & Architects
• Building Green Software: A Sustainable Approach to Software Development and Operations
• Empowering Green Initiatives with IT: A Strategy and Implementation Guide
• Designing for Sustainability: A Guide to Building Greener Digital Products and Services
• Green IT For Dummies
• Green Software Essentials: A Q&A Guide for Practitioners
• Sustainable IT Playbook for Technology Leaders
• Sustainable Web Design
• The Green IT Guide

Research

Artificial Intelligence

• Carbon-Neutralized Task Scheduling for Green Computing Networks
• Counting Carbon: A Survey of Factors Influencing the Emissions of Machine Learning
• Climate Change and AI: Recommendations for Government Action
• Efficiency is Not Enough: A Critical Perspective of Environmentally Sustainable AI
• Energy and Policy Considerations for Deep Learning in NLP
• Energy-Efficient AI | Vivienne Sze | TEDxMIT
• Exploring the Carbon Footprint of Hugging Face's ML Models: A Repository Mining Study
• Good News About the Carbon Footprint of Machine Learning Training
• How to estimate carbon footprint when training deep learning models? A guide and review
• Measuring the Carbon Intensity of AI in Cloud Instances
• Quantifying the Carbon Emissions of Machine Learning
• SECure: A Social and Environmental Certificate for AI Systems
• The AI Gambit — Leveraging Artificial Intelligence to Combat Climate Change: Opportunities, Challenges, and Recommendations
• The Carbon Footprint of Machine Learning Training Will Plateau, Then Shrink
• The Imperative for Sustainable AI Systems
• Towards Environmentally Equitable AI via Geographical Load Balancing
• The Two Faces of AI in Green Mobile Computing: A Literature Review
• Unraveling the hidden environmental impacts of AI solutions for the environment
• Chasing Low-Carbon Electricity for Practical and Sustainable DNN Training
• Zeus: Understanding and Optimizing GPU Energy Consumption of DNN Training

Blockchain

• An Analysis of Energy Consumption and Carbon Footprints of Cryptocurrencies and Possible Solutions
• Confronting the Carbon-footprint Challenge of Blockchain
• Ethereum Emissions: A Bottom-up Estimate

Computation

• A Comparative Study of Methods for Measurement of Energy of Computing
• An experiment-driven energy consumption model for virtual machine management systems
• EnergiBridge: Empowering Software Sustainability through Cross-Platform Energy Measurement
• Let’s Wait Awhile: How Temporal Workload Shifting Can Reduce Carbon Emissions in the Cloud
• Going Green: Optimizing GPUs for Energy Efficiency Through Model-steered Auto-tuning
• Green-aware Mobile Edge Computing for IoT: Challenges, Solutions, and Future Directions
• Measuring IT Carbon Footprint: What is the Current Status Actually?
• Quantifying the Carbon Emissions of Computation

Crypto

• Accounting for carbon emissions caused by cryptocurrency and token systems

Data Centers

• Architectural Tactics to Optimize Software for Energy Efficiency in the Public Cloud
• Balancing Power Systems with Datacenters Using a Virtual Interconnector
• Carbon-Aware Computing for Datacenters
• Hiding Greenhouse Gas Emissions in the Cloud
• Power consumption and efficiency of cooling in a Data Center
• Quantifying the Benefits of Carbon-Aware Temporal and Spatial Workload Shifting in the Cloud
• Supporting energy-awareness for cloud users
• The Case for Energy-Proportional Computing
• The Dirty Secret of SSDs: Embodied Carbon
• Treehouse: A Case For Carbon-Aware Datacenter Software
• Verifiable Sustainability in Data Centers

Emissions

• A Framework For Collective Carbon Neutrality
• Methodological Guide - Bilan Carbone (French)
• Putting a CO2 figure on a piece of computation
• The energy and carbon footprint of the ICT and E&M sector in Sweden 1990–2015 and beyond
• The Most Important GHG Accounting Concept You May Not Have Heard of: The Attributional Consequential Distinction
• Tracking emissions in the US electricity system

Programming Languages

• Energy Efficiency Across Programming Languages
• Google Apps: Energy Efficiency in the Cloud
• Green and Sustainability in Software Development Lifecycle Process
• GreenC5: An Adaptive, Energy-Aware Collection for Green Software Development
• Software development methodology in a Green IT environment

Quantum Computing

• Is quantum computing green? An estimate for an energy-efficiency quantum advantage

Streaming

• DImpact

Web

• CarbonTag: A browser-based method for approximating energy consumption of online ads
• Quantifying Carbon Emissions due to Online Third-Party Tracking

Contribute

Contributions welcome! Read the contribution guidelines first.