The New Stack Podcast

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

Aug 15, 2024

Anne Currie, a leading expert in sustainable tech with 30 years of experience, shares her insights on building resilient software. She discusses vital concepts like energy proportionality and how increased utilization enhances efficiency. Currie emphasizes the importance of architecting systems to harness renewable energy and addresses the challenges of greenwashing in the tech industry. With practical steps and real-world examples, she illustrates how software can dynamically adapt to resource fluctuations, turning sustainability into a competitive advantage.

41:54

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Episode guests

Anne Currie

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Quick takeaways

Anne Currie emphasizes the importance of energy proportionality in software development, highlighting how operational usage affects energy efficiency and carbon emissions.

The podcast discusses the need for software engineers to adapt to renewable energy dynamics, advocating for resilience and flexibility in managing power consumption.

Deep dives

The Urgency of Green Software Literature

The podcast highlights a significant gap in the literature surrounding green software, with few dedicated resources available compared to topics like artificial intelligence. Anne Currie explains that writing on sustainability in software is complex, covering various disciplines. This complexity, combined with the rapidly changing landscape of sustainable practices, may explain the lack of extensive material. Currie expresses hope that her new book, 'Building Green Software', will inspire further exploration and authorship in this essential area.

Intro

2min

Navigating Software Sustainability

5min

Understanding Climate vs. Weather

5min

Understanding Energy Proportionality in Technology

2min

Optimizing Resource Provisioning in Software Production

19min

Integrating Carbon Budgets in Software Development

9min

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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