What Is Green Computing and How Is It Reducing IT’s Environmental Impact?

Reduce your IT carbon footprint in the era of compute-intensive tech with green computing techniques.

Green computing aligns your digital transformation with sustainability

The rise of compute-intensive technologies such as AI coupled with increasing sustainability requirements are driving demand for energy-efficient computing — a package of technologies and applications that reduce IT systems’ energy consumption.

Energy-efficient computing (aka green computing) includes incremental tactics such as adopting greener energy or switching to more efficient hardware, and long-term strategies enabled by novel technologies.

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    Embrace green computing using four progressive tactics to achieve energy efficiency

    IT leaders can reduce their function’s carbon footprint using greener energy, more modern hardware and good practices for efficient coding and algorithms. But, on their own, none of these are likely to be enough to deliver needed improvements.

    To increase impact, adopt four progressive tactics to achieve energy-efficient computing:

    1. Refine use of existing hardware for efficiency, optimize algorithms and data representations, and leverage greener energy sources.

    2. Replace old, inefficient hardware when the carbon savings of more efficient operation exceeds the carbon cost of doing so.

    3. Rearchitect applications by changing the application code and platforms. Examples include replacing general purpose processors with graphics processing units (GPUs) or field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs).

    Revolutionize applications by adopting emerging computing platforms and architectures, such as neuromorphic systems or optical systems (when they become sufficiently mature).

    Address the challenges of energy-efficient computing

    The road to green computing remains complex. Be mindful that:

    • Before IT can invest in changing applications, they must establish measurement and tracking systems to understand which applications and systems warrant the effort to make them greener.

    • Green IT is a complex domain where technologies and requirements are evolving rapidly. 

    • The technologies that will deliver the greatest benefits aren't yet sufficiently mature to deploy.

    Ready your organization to embrace green computing

    Computations that consume the highest energy (such as AI, optimization and simulation) are targets for some emerging computing technologies. Examples include neuromorphic computing, optical computing and quantum computing. Gartner expects these technologies to deliver energy-efficient hardware options over the next five to 10 years.

    In the meantime, adopt the following short-term tactics:

    • Use better measurement tools.

    • Contract with greener cloud providers.

    • Shift workloads to greener cloud regions.

    • Run systems when the local supply emits lower carbon intensity.

    • Retire and replace in-house hardware with more efficient modern systems.

    • Monitor and pilot emerging technologies.

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    FAQs about green computing

    What are the goals of green computing?

    Improving sustainability is an increasingly important commercial, social and regulatory imperative. Since IT can be a material contributor to an organization's overall environmental footprint, embracing green computing can significantly lower IT’s carbon emissions, thereby substantially helping an organization meet its emission reduction goals.

    What are examples of green computing?

    Examples of green computing techniques common today include leveraging application architecture, code and algorithms that require less energy to run, adopting new, more efficient hardware and using greener power. In the future, more advanced techniques, including novel computing platforms that are still in the research phases today, will become available.

    Why is green computing important to the environment?

    Organizations use energy to develop and run applications, store data and operate networks. These activities demand more energy, and therefore, produce larger volumes of greenhouse gasses — due to the high compute requirements of increasingly popular applications that use AI training, simulation, optimization and media rendering. Embracing green computing can help organizations champion digital strategies while still meeting goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions — an important environmental goal.

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