Why green coding matters in cars and other applications

STUTTGART: Computer scientists are focusing on green coding as a way to reduce the CO2 emissions of information technology (IT) and combat climate change.

The ICT industry is responsible for 1.8 to 2.8 percent of annual greenhouse gas emissions, and this number is expected to rise significantly in the future.

Green coding aims to reduce the resources and energy required to design, create, process, and publish software projects.

By optimising software development, significant energy savings can be achieved.

It has been an issue in vehicle development for some time: ECUs exhibit extreme limitations in terms of memory and computing power, and therefore need to be programmed very efficiently.

But even in this case, it could be possible to save energy—by intelligently distributing the computing operations: energy-saving ones in the vehicle and more computationally intensive ones in the cloud.

One study found that two word processing programs consumed vastly different amounts of energy, with one using only a quarter of the energy of the other.

Similarly, different programming languages have varying levels of energy efficiency, with older languages like C performing better than newer ones like Ruby and Python.

Green coding also involves minimising unnecessary code, using open-source software libraries efficiently, and reducing network traffic in distributed software applications.

The German Federal Ministry for the Environment has extended its Blue Angel eco-label to software to recogniSe particularly green products.

However, green coding is still gaining traction among businesses, and there is a need to create awareness among developers about the impact of their work on the environment.

Green coding can be applied in any industry and has great potential in areas such as IT, finance, automotive, and online retail.

By adopting green coding practices, developers can contribute to climate protection and reduce the environmental impact of IT.