Making Sustainable Software Visible – Show Your Colors With Green Software Design
The Federal Environment Agency’s „Blauer Engel“ certification body recently certified software for special energy efficiency and sustainability for the first time, as reported by Informationsdienst Wissenschaft (idw). And although more and more people are becoming interested in the topic of sustainability and integrating measures for more environmental protection into their everyday lives, an awareness of the climate impact of apps, the Internet and networking is only slowly seeping into the general consciousness. Yet software must be developed, patched and operated. “If the Internet were a country, it would have the sixth-largest electricity consumption on earth,” reports ZDF. When consumers become aware of this, they are faced with the question of what positive contribution they can make here. For this, there are now labels that help them get an idea of the energy efficiency of the software they use: The Green Software Design Label and the Blue Angel. In the Blue Angel certification process, the power consumption of programs is measured and evaluated. The Green Software Design Label, on the other hand, analyzes the manufacturing process of a program and can thus already evaluate concepts and plans.
Blue Angel certification
The Blue Angel eco-label offers certification for energy-efficient software products. In the certification process, the sustainability of programs is evaluated based on criteria, followed by the measurement of power consumption. Consumption must be disclosed, but the level of consumption does not determine whether the label is awarded. General resource efficiency, increase in hardware useful life and usage autonomy are the main evaluation categories. In the measurements, there may well be considerable differences in power consumption between comparable programs: for example, a comparison of four word processing programs showed that the power consumption of one of the programs examined in the same usage scenario was four times higher than that of one of the comparison partners berichtet Marina Köhn of the Federal Environment Agency told MDR. Only programs that run on a single computer, on which the measurements are then also performed, can be analyzed. Therefore, only desktop applications can be certified with this method. The Blue Angel certification process evaluates the sustainability of the examined software under climate protection aspects, but also considers availability and social participation (keyword open source) through the software.
Das Green-Software-Design-Label
Marking a software with the Green Software Design Label indicates that the award-winning software was developed using resource-saving processes or that resource efficiency was already taken into account as a requirement during development. For the award, the manufacturing process and the climate impact of the program in later use are evaluated. The choice of technology (programming languages, databases, frameworks), the development process, the basic structure or architecture of the software, its size and complexity, and finally savings that can be expected from its use in the “real world” are examined. In contrast to the Blue Angel, the Green Software Design Label evaluates the process more than the resultant product. The award is therefore given to software that exploits the state of the art in green software. Another advantage over the Blue Angel is that distributed systems, which make up a large proportion of applications today, can also be analyzed. To obtain the label, an assessment is first carried out using the Green Software Expertyzer evaluation software, followed by an audit to implement the technical and process-related measures. The Green Software Expertyzer can be used in an advisory capacity and highlight the “climate protection” aspect in the decision-making process. The program does not forecast concrete emission values and savings potentials. It focuses on serving as a guide for development teams.
When to apply for what?
Both labels pursue the goal of making “green” software recognizable to consumers. However, the award procedures differ in the scope, time of analysis, and type of software that can be assessed. The Green Software Expertyzer is suitable for mobile, web, and client-server applications running on distributed devices and ensures quality assurance during production. The label takes into account climate protection aspects, but no additional criteria for sustainability. For Blue Angel certification, a number of features of the software are tested to assess the sustainability of the program. The power consumption must be specified, but the awarding of the label is independent of its level. This label is thus a quality control and evaluates the result of the software development based on a wide range of sustainability criteria. The labels thus have different informative qualities, but do not represent competing products, but rather complement each other.