Green coding: Why it matters & best practices for sustainability

The tech market is growing rapidly. While we see many benefits of globalization and advancements, there are also some flaws. According to IEA, the electricity consumption by the tech industry globally was around 1–1.3% of the global final electricity demand. This excludes cryptocurrency mining, estimated to be around 0.4% of the global electricity demand. 

With these advancements, people are becoming more aware of sustainability and energy saving. And that is also seen in the tech industry. This is a large amount of energy consumption by one industry globally, so companies are switching toward sustainable alternatives. Green coding is a new practice but it can benefit businesses in the long run. Developers who are learning to code should also focus on sustainability and efficiency. Learning green coding in the early stages, especially in these times, can be very favorable for developers. 

What is green coding?#

Green coding or sustainable coding is an emerging terminology that focuses on making software more energy efficient and less harmful to the environment. Green coding emphasizes creating applications or writing code with less carbon footprint and more energy efficiency. 

Green coding does not mean you must learn how to code from scratch. It is neither different nor a new way to design or develop applications. Green coding focuses on writing software using the least possible energy. This means optimizing algorithms, reducing computational complexity, and using energy-efficient coding practices.

As a developer, the next time you’re designing, developing, or testing any application, adapting some of the best green coding practices will help you code efficiently. 

Green coding is part of a broader movement toward sustainability in the tech industry, recognizing the significant energy consumption and environmental impact associated with digital technologies and seeking to mitigate these effects.

Measuring energy impact: Metrics, tools, and benchmarks#

Writing greener code starts with knowing how much energy your software actually uses. Without metrics, “green coding” remains a good intention rather than a measurable practice.

Here’s how teams can start measuring their impact:

• Carbon intensity calculators: Tools like Cloud Carbon Footprint estimate emissions based on cloud resource usage.

• Energy profilers: Libraries such as CodeCarbon or Intel RAPL APIs measure power consumption at the code or process level.

• Performance metrics: Monitor CPU time, memory use, and data transfer volumes — they’re strong proxies for energy consumption.

By integrating energy metrics into CI/CD pipelines, you can make sustainability a quantifiable KPI rather than just an aspiration.

Architecture choices: Energy-aware infrastructure#

The infrastructure you choose — not just the code you write — has a massive impact on carbon emissions. Optimizing at the platform level can yield some of the biggest wins:

• Serverless vs. containers vs. VMs: Use serverless where possible to minimize idle resources and pay only for actual compute time.

• Auto-scaling and shutdown policies: Ensure unused instances automatically scale down or shut off.

• Hardware selection: Favor ARM-based or energy-efficient processors where available, especially for microservices.

• Region-aware deployment: Run workloads in data centers with access to renewable energy sources.

Small architectural decisions — like batching requests or reducing polling intervals — can significantly lower overall power consumption.

Software lifecycle sustainability: Beyond runtime efficiency#

Green coding doesn’t end when the app is deployed. A large chunk of energy usage comes from build pipelines, dependency management, and deployment processes.

Key strategies:

• Dependency pruning: Use lighter libraries and avoid unnecessary packages to reduce build size and runtime overhead.

• Build caching and CI optimization: Cache dependencies, skip redundant tests, and minimize container rebuilds.

• Release frequency considerations: Frequent deployments mean frequent builds — automate intelligently to reduce wasted compute.

These steps extend the idea of green coding to the entire software lifecycle — from local builds to production deployments.

Edge and device-level efficiency#

Not all code runs in the cloud — some runs on devices with limited battery life or in edge environments with strict energy budgets. Writing energy-efficient software here requires different techniques:

• Duty cycling: Schedule work to minimize power-hungry operations.

• Local processing vs. cloud offloading: Offload heavy computations to the cloud when device power is limited.

• Data minimization: Reduce data transfer between devices and servers to save bandwidth and energy.

These practices are critical for IoT, wearables, and mobile apps — where battery life is often the most tangible measure of sustainability.

Tooling and automation for green coding#

There’s a growing ecosystem of tools designed to help developers make more sustainable decisions:

• CodeCarbon: Estimates energy use per line of code or experiment.

• Scaphandre: Measures energy usage per process in real time.

• Carbon Aware SDK: Suggests when and where to run workloads based on grid carbon intensity.

• Energy Profiler (Chrome DevTools): Tracks power consumption in web apps.

Integrating these tools into development pipelines helps teams track impact continuously — just like performance metrics or security scans.

Best practices for green coding#

With the world progressing at the speed of light, we can’t neglect the importance of energy conservation. No matter what niche or industry you’re working in, as long as you use any energy, it’s time to think about efficiency and sustainability. Today, as tech enthusiasts, we will discuss a few best practices for green coding. 

Resource management#

The first practice you should start working on is resource management. It is crucial to manage resources effectively. Ensure that your software or application only uses the resources required at the time. After utilization of a particular resource, release it when it’s no longer needed. This includes proper management of memory, processing power, and network bandwidth.

Energy-aware programming#

Energy-aware programming is a key element of green coding. It focuses on reducing the energy consumption of software applications, especially those with high usage or long runtimes. This approach involves choosing programming languages, libraries, and frameworks that are known for their efficiency in terms of energy usage. For example, languages like the C programming language or the Rust language can be more energy-efficient than higher-level languages like Python or JavaScript due to their lower-level control over hardware resources and efficient memory management. 

Simplifying rollout updates#

Software updates for large-scale systems can be resource-intensive. It involves significant data transfer and processing and sometimes necessitates hardware upgrades. Green coding emphasizes making these updates lightweight and efficient. 

This can be achieved through techniques such as incremental updates, where only the changed parts of the software are downloaded and installed rather than replacing the entire application. Moreover, you can also optimize the packages for size by compressing data and removing unnecessary components to reduce the bandwidth and conserve energy. 

Using sustainable energy#

While we are focusing on efficient ways to code, we should also focus on using sustainable substitutes of energy as well. Offices should encourage their employees to conserve energy in all possible ways. For example, employees can work remotely and reduce electricity use in offices or use the resources to commute to the office. Businesses should start using solar energy to produce electricity for their offices. 

Beyond coding practices, the IT infrastructure itself can be optimized for energy efficiency. This includes using energy-efficient servers, optimizing data center layouts for better cooling, and utilizing cloud computing services, which can be more energy-efficient than traditional on-premises data centers. Employers should also educate their employees on efficient ways to reduce energy consumption in their professional and personal lives. 

Shifting to the cloud#

Cloud computing is an energy-efficient and cost-cutting solution for businesses. Developers should shift to cloud servers to reduce energy consumption. Shifting to the cloud reduces the need for businesses to maintain their own physical IT infrastructure. This means less energy use and is a great cost-effective solution for all businesses. 

Cloud computing also allows ultimate scalability and flexibility. Businesses only pay for the resources they are utilizing, allowing developers to access anything from anywhere around the world. Big cloud providers like Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud have aimed to power their operations with 100% renewable energy. Don’t know much about the cloud? It’s time to learn cloud computing fundamentals and start practicing on Educative CloudLabs. 

Tradeoffs: Balancing sustainability with performance#

Not every “green” decision is free. Sometimes optimizing for energy efficiency can lead to higher latency, increased complexity, or longer development time.

Best practices for finding balance:

• Measure energy impact alongside other KPIs (latency, throughput, cost).

• Identify diminishing returns — focus on the 20% of changes that produce 80% of savings.

• Consider user experience: energy efficiency should enhance, not degrade, your product.

A mature sustainability strategy isn’t about sacrificing quality — it’s about making informed tradeoffs that balance energy use with performance and business goals.

Case studies: Green coding in the real world#

Adding real-world examples makes the concept more tangible and inspiring. For example:

• Spotify optimized caching and playback algorithms, reducing server energy use by over 15%.

• Google dynamically schedules machine learning workloads based on real-time carbon intensity of the power grid.

• Mozilla Firefox reduced memory usage and page load times, improving both performance and energy efficiency.

These examples show that sustainability isn’t a side project — it’s a competitive advantage.

First steps toward green coding#

Green coding might seem like a new term in the tech world, but it’s gaining popularity rapidly, leading to a smarter and safer future. That is why, as an individual, it is time to take your first steps toward green coding. You don’t have to make drastic changes in your routine; just some little steps can create a big difference. Some small steps toward green coding include:

• Learning more about green coding: The first step is to completely understand what green coding is and why it is important. Once you have a clear idea of what it is, share it with your peers and friends. 

• Analyzing the code’s energy efficiency: Start evaluating your code’s energy efficiency. Learn about algorithms and data structures that are energy-efficient, and understand how you can use different coding tools to improve your effectiveness. 

• Adopting energy-saving techniques: Switch to remote work and cloud computing. Remote work can reduce the carbon footprint associated with commuting and office energy consumption, while cloud computing can offer more energy-efficient data processing and storage options.