Green & Sustainable Software

We’re in a bit of a pickle with our climate. I know what you might be thinking, there are responsible parties that should be making the big changes. That said, we can all contribute to improve our chances. Sometimes I feel a bit powerless as a software developer in this respect. But I think there’s actually an incredible scope for us to contribute and make a difference. There’s definitely room to optimize our share of global electricity consumption. The IT sector is estimated to consume 7% of global electricity. But I think there’s also a huge potential to pair software with sustainability. Green tech, I love the idea. So I’m always on the lookout for software and tech with a green agenda.

The Website Carbon Calculator

Powered by the legends at Wholegrain Digital, I’m going to be using this tool to shame my favourite green tech stars. I can’t help but get this on the top of the list. Do you really know how your website is impacting the planet? Tech is such an invisible force and this tool serves to try to help us understand the cost. It’s not exact, assumptions are made along the way but it’s a great start. Refinements to the calculations come quite often too.

Plug your website in and see how its carbon compares in everyday life. How many cups of tea could you have made with your site? In the UK we go crazy to switch off our lights and kill stand-by LEDs. Yet we don’t care how many cups of tea our tech is wasting behind the scenes.

Mina

Probably my favourite electric vehicle (EV) tech startup. Mina are making strides out to improve EV uptake. Really quirky name too, I love a bit of trivia like that. Mina’s product line casts a large net, they target a huge audience in vehicle fleets but also home users too.

One of their key products involves proxying payments for EV fleet charging at home. In summary, fleet operators pay the bill but the EVs are charged at workers’ homes, where it’s cheapest. Unlike a company credit card, we don’t exactly get an itemised list of what our electricity was used for on each bill. Tricky! It must have been quite the ride trying to get all the power companies to play ball. And what about all the different chargers/EV models? It looks great and I would love to see it in action.

Dirty website though, folks.

Lune

Offsets as a service. They seem to be powering an API to build-in emission calculations and carbon removal into user experiences. Really clever. They advertise use cases in payments, logistics and retail. Plus, they do seem to differentiate between the good, the bad and the ugly of climate offsets. Their blog is really interesting if you like this kind of thing. The product itself does feel a little bit abstract as an outsider. But it could be a powerfully low-barrier to entry for businesses looking to be better.

Dirtiest website in this list. Feels bad. Brownie points for sustainable energy though.