Max Schulze was invited by the European Policy Centre to the policy dialogue "Greening ICT: What can the EU do?" and spoke about the ecological footprint of software, its impacts, and the importance of transparency regarding energy consumption and embedded emissions.

Introductory Remarks

No data center is designed and built, no network established, no server manufactured without software being the driving force. Therefore, software must take responsibility for the environmental impact it causes through its required infrastructure. This responsibility can only arise through transparency.

Software must disclose at least two things transparently: 1) the energy consumption for which it is responsible and 2) the embedded emissions in the underlying infrastructure—starting with servers. I am pleased to see that the Greens/EFA group is conducting a life cycle analysis as part of their recently announced study.

Digital products and services consist of software. Currently, customers purchasing these digital offerings cannot make decisions based on ecological sustainability because the information is simply not available. Transparency about environmental impact does not occur naturally. Many digital companies either ignore the issue or focus solely on the electricity aspect, while most tend to create an alternative narrative where digital technology is said to save more CO₂ and energy than it consumes. This is obviously not the case, as proven by a recent study from the Borderstep Institute (CliDiTrans).

Without transparency and choice for customers, there is no healthy competition focused on reducing environmental impacts—only on innovation speed and growth. The negative external effects of the resulting environmental impact are not accounted for by the market—therefore, society bears the costs, not the manufacturer. It is the regulator's job to intervene and demand transparency from all entities selling digital products and services to customers and businesses. The European Union is already a global leader in environmental and eco-regulation—why have we not acted on digital products?

SDIA has already published an open framework along with a comprehensive methodology on how the energy and resource consumption of software can be made visible for consumers and businesses. However, regulation is required to accelerate the movement towards transparency and customer choice.

Energy Efficiency and Software Development

Software development has always been focused on energy efficiency—maximizing performance per watt. However, the abundance of infrastructure and resources creates wasteful behavior, further accelerated by the cloud paradigm. Europe has the opportunity to promote sustainable software development practices by making resource consumption transparent.

With the support of the German federal government, SDIA is working on the necessary tools to help software developers understand their energy and resource consumption (SoftAWERE).

Through full transparency, we can address the inefficiencies of software and the underlying infrastructure—which is actually a relatively simple process:

• Circular Economy. Transform the manufacturing, sales process, and use of any IT equipment into a circular economy—from servers to laptops and smartphones. For example: Increase warranty and use durations for IT equipment from 5 to 10 years to immediately reduce electronic waste. Manufacturers should introduce as-a-service models, where they remain owners of the hardware—creating an incentive to maximize the lifespan of the devices. This can already be triggered today through public procurement.

• Integration. Integrate data centers into the energy system through incentives or regulation with the goal of aligning their electricity consumption with the availability of renewable energies.

• Sector Coupling. It is essential to attribute value to the waste heat from data centers. Furthermore, the costs of generating this heat must be made transparent to enable sector coupling: All regions in Europe will need to electrify heating. Data centers are a stable, reliable, and thus ideal heat source to increase the efficiency of heat pumps and cold storage—let’s use this!

Conclusion

Everything begins with creating transparency about environmental impact and resource consumption. The technologies for climate-neutral digital infrastructure already exist—what is missing is the drive for change. Transparency is this impetus.