Want to Create Software Sustainably? Anne Currie’s Got Ideas

Anne Currie, a leading expert in sustainable tech and part of the Green Software Foundation, discusses practical steps for building resilient, sustainable software in an episode of The New Stack Makers. With 30 years of experience, Currie co-authored Building Green Software, emphasizing the tech industry's role in the energy transition. She highlights the complexity of adapting technology to renewable energy, involving extensive research and debunking misinformation. Currie discusses the importance of energy proportionality—the idea that increased utilization improves a computer's energy efficiency—and how this concept aligns with modern DevOps practices that reduce carbon emissions while enhancing speed, cost efficiency, and security.

Currie also emphasizes architecting systems to operate on renewable power and draws parallels between managing variable grid power and internet bandwidth. Using examples like video conferencing, she illustrates how software can adapt to fluctuating resources. The episode also touches on potential pitfalls like greenwashing and the challenges in accurately naming concepts like energy proportionality.

Learn more from The New Stack about sustainability: 

Sustainability: How Did Amazon, Azure, Google Perform in 2023? 

Sustainability Focus: Cloud Efficiency, Not Carbon Emissions 

Developers Should Press Cloud Providers on Sustainability 

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