Politics

The greeNsort^® project is a unique risk-free, low-cost and high-impact UN SDG Action opportunity to contribute to the European Green Deal. greeNsort^® could quickly deliver energy savings of up to 50 TWh/year and emission savings up to 30 MtCO2e/year.

Politics struggles to understand the economics of software — there is no funding for green software¹. There are suggestions² (but not implementations) to cope with the free-rider problem of public goods, but regarding individual incentives for building public goods nothing has been suggested, let alone implemented. By contrast, economic wisdom on free-riding is often ignored by governments or overuled by courts.

Politics talks about clean-tech

We will be a world leader in circular economy and clean technologies — Ursula von der Leyen³

talks about efficient IT

We will have to develop technologies with the Green New Deal to minimize energy consumption and improve energy efficiency […] The fight against climate change cannot be won without digital solutions — Margrethe Vestager⁴

even talks about sustainable software algorithms

Environmental protection must be programmed into every algorithm — Svenja Schulze⁵

but acts on buzzwords

27 million EUR funding for Environmental protection by AI algorithms — Svenja Schulze⁶

silly enough: AI is part of the problem

Machine learning generates far more carbon emissions than most people realize — HAI Stanford⁷

Training a single AI model can emit as much carbon as five cars in their lifetimes — MIT Technology Review⁸

hence IT professionals warn to not ignore IT efficiency

The [European] Commission should legislate specific and ambitious greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction requirements accompanied by suitable enforcement mechanisms for the ICT sector overall — Oliver Grau⁹

even the industry lobby is worried

In addition to acute crisis management, a long-term view of climate protection and strategic competitive opportunities for innovative technologies must not be lost — BDI The Voice of German Industry¹⁰

hopyfully industry acts beyond greenwashing

The Green Software Foundation was born out of a mutual desire and need to collaborate across the software industry.

I believe in innovation and that the way you get innovation is you fund research and you learn the basic facts — Bill Gates

Green requires free and there is no funding for free software. EU-funding (whether for climate or innovation) is only available for projects of multi-partner-collaborations, bureaucracy is overwhelming and only feasible for established players, all the money which is meant to promote innovation trickles down established channels. National and state funding (we tried Germany and Bavaria) is only available for established research institutions or for-profit companies. There is simply no serious funding for free software aside small projects like hackathon events ↩︎
Elinor Ostrom, William D. Nordhaus ↩︎
Political Guidelines for the next European Commission 2019-2024 ↩︎
EU Commissioner warns of internet’s energy use, climate consequences, 15. December 2019 ↩︎
German Secretary for the environment, May 7th 2019 ↩︎
German Secretary for the environment, August 21st 2019 ↩︎
AI’s Carbon Footprint Problem, July 2nd 2020 ↩︎
Deep learning has a terrible carbon footprint, June 6th 2019 arXiv ↩︎
Chair ACM Europe Technology Policy Committe, June 22nd 2020 ↩︎
From “Green deal” to “Smart deal”, June 3rd 2020 ↩︎