Max Schulze discussed sustainable software with NGOs at Green IO Paris, focusing on collaboration, transparency, and policy frameworks for a European market for resource-efficient, environmentally friendly software.
Today's societal challenges are solved by people—not by technology and machines.
People in conversation with one another. Software is created by people. Digitalization alone will not solve climate change. Or inequality. It is people who drive this change. Those who write software can make a difference by taking the environmental impact of their software seriously and addressing it.
Awareness is growing—but remains a niche topic
By 2023, the movement has evolved: More organizations, tools, and companies are emerging in the growing field of Green Software. But we must be cautious. It remains a niche—a niche that we must constantly expand together.
As a sustainable software community, we cannot afford fragmentation. We are still small, we are the challengers of the existing market—and we must agree on common priorities: transparency, standardization, and political frameworks that enable a new market for resource-efficient, transparent, and environmentally friendly software.
Priorities
We need pan-European collaboration to find a common language for our digital world. We must jointly set standards for measuring the environmental impact of digital products. Regulation is urgently needed to create a market for resource-efficient, transparent, and environmentally friendly software. A first step: All digital products should declare their environmental impact and make it transparent to customers.
We can further accelerate market development by leveraging public and private procurement to demand transparency from digital products.
Research, methods, and tools exist—but we need a market
New tools, research papers, and methods emerge almost weekly. But when you ask these young companies, they lack one critical element: genuine demand. This must change—either by making environmentally harmful software expensive or by creating a market for "good" software: resource-efficient, transparent, environmentally friendly.
Europe must take the lead
Environmental awareness, efficiency, and sustainability are ingrained in the European DNA. We have a long history of optimization and a culture of improvement. Let's use this history as an example—and the European market to shape a sustainable digital economy.