The Green Software Foundation (GSF) has released new tools and resources that provide organizations with a coordinated three-step action plan to learn, measure, and reduce their carbon emissions. Formed under the Linux Foundation in 2021, the GSF was launched by a coalition including Microsoft, GitHub, Accenture, and Thoughtworks, and is dedicated to promoting sustainability in software development.
First, for emissions measurement, organizations can employ the Software Carbon Intensity (SCI) Specification v.1.0, a standardized protocol to calculate the rate of carbon emissions for a software system.
For carbon emissions reductions, organizations can implement several patterns from the Green Software Patterns Catalog, an online open-source database of green software patterns categorized by field of engineering, technology and domain.
To address decarbonization needs, the free online Green Software Practitioner Course helps users of any skill level develop the knowledge and technical skills for decarbonizing software.
Expanded efforts to incentivize software decarbonization are supported by steering committee members including Boston Consulting Group (BCG), NTT Data, Intel Corporation, Thoughtworks, and more.