Sustainable computing for reducing the socio-environmental impact in the development of modern applications

Abstract

Sustainable Computing is an urgent challenge. Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) consume 5% to 6% of global energy and generate up to 4% of the global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The growing demand, driven by Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain, projects that data center consumption will double by 2026, a trend that is unsustainable and threatens digital inclusion and technological sovereignty in emerging countries. Solving this Grand Challenge will require the development of low-carbon software that employs energy-efficient algorithms, conscious programming methods and intelligent automation, and the use of emissions-aware resource management, with the use of Sustainable High-Performance Computing techniques and specialized hardware and software. This is a problem that cuts across Computing, whose success aims to promote Economic Sustainability and Digital Inclusion by reducing the costs of access to computational resources.