Green software: Extend the lifespan of your (used) IT equipment

This is blog 12 in the blog series about Green IT.

Did you know that the lion’s share of the CO2 footprint of IT equipment is attributable to the production phase? When measuring the impact of ICT, it is therefore important to also consider the production of the hardware you use. This includes things like the servers in the data centre, the laptop and mobile phone you use, and the cables required to transport the data.

In the previous two blogs we examined how software can actively contribute to reducing energy consumption and how you can make deliberate choices to effectively use green energy by aligning your demand with the supply. Now we will look more closely at the fourth principle of green software: optimising hardware efficiency.

Principle 4 – Hardware efficiency (1)

If you want to get serious with green software, you also need to understand the CO2 footprint of the hardware you use to develop or modify your software. The focus here is specifically on the ‘embodied’ or ‘embedded’ carbon – that is, the CO2 footprint of your devices, produced during the production process. This footprint is often bigger than the CO2 emission resulting from actual use, as the graph below demonstrates.

Image obtained from the Green Software Foundation.

By investigating the relationship between production and use, it is immediately clear that by the time we start using a computer, significant CO2 emissions have already taken place. Besides, computers and other hardware have a limited lifespan. As soon as they start to trail behind the latest expectations or demands, they are replaced.

Research shows that an average laptop lasts for just three years, while the lifespan of a server ranges between 3.5 and 5 years. Unless it is used for crypto mining, in which case the lifespan sometimes dwindles to just 3 months! If we wish to achieve CO2 efficiency, it is essential to also critically examine our hardware.

There are two ways to optimise hardware efficiency:

• by extending the lifespan of end user devices

• by maximising server use (in case of cloud computing).

Extending the lifespan

Hardware generally has a limited lifespan, usually for three reasons:

• users often set new demands regarding their devices, such as speed, format, weight or fashion trends (this applies particularly to mobile phones);

• new software demands more of the hardware, so that older computers no longer satisfy system requirements;

• technical defects can cause your computer to break down.

You can extend the lifespan of computers by making sure that the software you use is not constantly being updated to meet the latest technological requirements. You can do so by making sure that the software also works on older hardware. One practical example is to limit the colour palette, thereby reducing the burden on older graphic cards. The same applies for animations and videos.

Behavioural change is essential

The other two aspects are within the user’s domain and demand a behavioural change on their part. As an organisation, you have some influence over this by setting out internal policy regarding the minimal lifespan of a computer. In addition you can encourage that computers are repaired rather than immediately replaced, even if the reparation is more expensive than a replacement. And you can obviously break with what is so often standard policy, that new employees are immediately issued with a new laptop while there might well be properly functioning, used laptops lying on the shelf.

End of lifespan? Refurbish or recycle

It is also important to think about what to do with outdated equipment. You can for instance donate a laptop to the Stichting Laptop Opvang (3), an organisation devoted to giving computers a second lease of life.

If a computer is truly beyond use, then drop it off at a place where its components can be reused. Make sure the workplace carries the WEEELABEX certificate (4), which guarantees that the organisation meets the European directive for electric and electronic waste. An organisation is awarded this certificate if all its procedures for the recycling, processing and repurposing of disposed electronic devices are demonstrably in order.

Increase the device use in the cloud

We previously discussed energy proportionality and the fact that it costs less energy to run one server with 100% utilisation than five servers with 20% utilisation. You can compare it to having a single car with which you commute to work every day, rather than having five cars that you use alternatingly. In addition, there’s the advantage that having less servers means producing less CO2 emissions in the production process.

Organisations often choose to have surplus server capacity, with a view to peak load (for instance the extra traffic created by people visiting online shops on Black Friday). The idea is that, by having this surplus capacity, any peak load moments can be handled without website failure. But it does mean that you have this surplus server capacity available year-round, which you don’t or hardly use. Hardware efficiency in this respect means that you use each device as much as possible and for as long as possible.

If you wish to use your hardware more efficiency, you could consider switching to the public cloud. You then make use of shared computer resources without owning the physical infrastructure (servers, storage and applications). It also allows you to deploy IT resources quickly and efficiently. If you need to scale up because of peak demand, then this capacity is immediately available. Reserve capacity can always be assigned to whoever needs it, so that servers do not go unused.

Conclusion

Hardware and green software cannot be seen separately from each other. It is important to take account of your hardware in your deliberations. Remember that the lion’s share of the CO2 footprint is attributable to the production phase. You should therefore aim to extend your hardware’s lifespan and to use it as optimally as possible.

In the next blog, which wraps up this theme, we will take a closer look at the last two principles of green software. We will describe how you can measure the CO2 emission of your software, and which specific climate goals green software seeks to achieve.

Sources

(1) This explanation is based on the explanation offered in Green Software Foundation’s Green Practitioner course.

(2) Stichting Laptop Opvang can be accessed at //www.laptopopvang.nl/

(3) BSI, Weeelaex – de norm & certificering. Last viewed on 29 October 2023.