Green by design for a sustainable future

6 mins. 6 mins.

Akshata Somangoudar

In today’s tech-driven world, the environmental impact of our digital footprint is undeniable, and in most cases growing. With IT contributing nearly 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions and placing a growing strain on finite resources like rare earth metals, the need for change has never been more urgent. But what can be done to address this?

As a Full Stack Developer, someone who develops both client and server software, and the tech lead of the RVX (Residual Value System/Portfolio) team, I work alongside my team to consciously integrate Green by Design principles into our daily work. From optimizing resource usage to adopting sustainable design practices, we aim to reduce energy consumption by developing technology that aligns with environmental sustainability.

What is Green by Design?

Green by Design refers to adopting sustainable practices into the core of the design process. It focuses on optimizing energy consumption, minimizing e-waste, and reducing the environmental footprint throughout the IT lifecycle. By integrating Green by Design principles, we can drastically lower their environmental impact, conserve valuable resources, and pave the way for a more eco-conscious future in the tech industry.

Developing transportation and infrastructure solutions worldwide involves significant IT resources. Minimizing the carbon footprint of these efforts is a key aspect of our company's sustainability journey. In this article, we will highlight a specific approach to achieving this.

My team, RVX stands for Residual Value System/Portfolio. One of our scope of work is to use Green by Design principles in software development. Our team supports a range of product brands within the Volvo Group family, including Volvo Trucks, Renault Trucks, Volvo Buses, and Volvo Construction Equipment. This ensures our solutions align with the diverse needs of the group's offerings.

How we secured the right tools to track Carbon Optimization

Exploring Green IT Analysis
The first step in our Green by Design journey was diving into the Green IT Analysis Chrome Extension. This browser extension is designed to evaluate and promote sustainable computing practices. It focuses on reducing energy consumption, lowering carbon footprints, and optimizing resource usage while browsing the web. By using this tool, we gain actionable insights and learn how to adopt more environmentally conscious coding habits.

Utilizing the Azure Carbon Optimization Dashboard
As part of our commitment to sustainability, we leverage the Carbon Optimization Dashboard in the Azure portal. This dashboard provides detailed insights into our monthly and total carbon emissions, allowing us to closely monitor and analyze our environmental impact. Additionally, it offers practical recommendations for reducing emissions, helping us integrate more sustainable practices into our workflows.

Understanding Emissions with ImpactCO2
To contextualize our emissions data, since the CO2 measurement may not be familiar to everyone, we use the tools provided by ImpactCO2. This platform translates carbon emissions into relatable real-world equivalents, such as the production of bottled water or hours of video streaming. These comparisons give us a clearer picture of the true scale of our environmental footprint, making the data more tangible and actionable.

Example of carbon emissions per year - values are merely illustrative.

Journey towards EcoIndex C:

When we conducted our initial analysis using the GreenIT-Analysis extension, we received an EcoIndex rating of "Index D", ranging from A to E, where A is the best score.. This prompted us to take action, addressing the identified issues one by one. Our efforts were guided by some of the 115 best practices outlined on the EcoIndex.fr: Ecodesign, which emphasizes web eco-design with a particular focus on front-end development.

1. Optimize images

At RVX we started using .svg for vector graphics and .avif for photographs, which is an excellent way to reduce image sizes while maintaining high quality. SVG is ideal for scalable icons and logos, offering smaller file sizes and infinite scalability compared to .png, while AVIF significantly compresses complex images, making them up to 10x smaller than PNG with similar or better quality. These formats enhanced loading time, lower bandwidth usage, and reduced energy consumption, aligning with Green by Design principles.

2. Pagination over infinite scrolling

Instead of loading all content at once, pagination is implemented in RVX, which loads content in chunks, reducing the immediate resource load on servers and end-user devices. This minimizes bandwidth usage and accelerates page load times. Pagination ties into principles of efficient resource management and user-friendly design, which are central themes in web eco-design. It contributes to sustainability by preventing overloading and unnecessary data transmission, which are critical for reducing the carbon footprint of web applications.

3. Applying the latest long-term supported version

At RVX, we stay up to date with the latest long-term support versions of technologies to align with Green by Design principles, enhancing both efficiency and sustainability. For example, modern updates like Angular's deferred loading and improved server-side rendering reduce resource utilization, while the latest Java JVM optimizations enhance performance. These advancements help minimize energy consumption, contributing to environmentally conscious application development.

4. Adding Expires or Cache-Control headers

Cache control headers are a set of HTTP Cache headers that tell browsers how long to cache website content, such as images, videos, or HTML pages. These headers control the browser’s cache and determine whether the content should be stored in the browser’s cache or whether it should be requested from the server each time a user visits the website.

Example:

Cache control headers

When a browser requests any of the above listed file types, it will:

· Cache them for 3 days as specified by the expires directive.

· Follow the Cache-Control policy for those 3 days:

o The resource can be cached by intermediaries (public).

o The resource must remain unchanged during caching (no-transform).

Why Use This?

· Performance: Reduces load on the server by allowing browsers and proxies to serve cached versions of static assets for 3 days.

· Reduced Latency: Improves user experience by reducing load times for repeated visits.

· Optimized Bandwidth Usage: Prevents repeated downloads of unchanged assets.

Ongoing works at RVX towards Green by Design

1. Implementation of vertical Pod AutoScaler

At RVX, implementing Vertical Pod Autoscaling (VPA) in OpenShift helps optimize pod resource usage by dynamically adjusting CPU and memory limits based on historical and real-time data. By maintaining optimal resource levels throughout the pod lifecycle, VPA minimizes over-provisioning, reducing energy consumption and hardware strain. This automation aligns with Green by Design principles by ensuring efficient resource utilization.

2. Prefer HTTP/2 over HTTP/1

HTTP/2 protocol has replaced requests and responses textual representations with binary one using HTTP header compression (HPACK). It also enables multiplexing, allowing the use of only one TCP connection (and thus a single TLS handshake) to the server, making the most of HPACK.

3. Industrializing the Eco-Index measurements

Industrializing the Eco-Index measurements is a key initiative that RVX is dedicating significant time and effort to. This tool is set to become a comprehensive Green by Design IT analysis solution, enabling development teams to seamlessly incorporate sustainability checks into their workflows. By simply providing a URL, teams can analyze each page for its environmental impact.

Summary

Embracing Green by Design is not just an organizational initiative; it is an individual responsibility. Each of us has a role to play in making technology more sustainable. From design to production, it is crucial to incorporate best practices that align with Green by Design principles. This includes optimizing energy efficiency, minimizing resource waste, and considering environmental impacts at every stage of the Digital Product lifecycle.

By integrating these practices into our daily work and embedding the IT sustainability agenda into our Definition of Done (when all conditions of a software are met and ready to be accepted by the users), we can ensure that environmental considerations become a natural part of our workflow. Small, consistent actions—such as writing efficient code, minimizing redundant processes, and leveraging eco-friendly infrastructure—can collectively lead to significant positive change.

Adopting a Green by Design mindset not only contributes to a healthier planet but also paves the way for more resilient and future-proof technology solutions. Let’s make sustainability a core value, shaping a tech-driven world that is both innovative and responsible!

Author Bio:

Akshata Somangoudar is a Full Stack Developer from India at Volvo Group Digital & IT since 2021. She is passionate about continuous learning, especially exploring ideas and technologies that create a positive impact on the world and contribute to making the planet safer for future generations. In her spare time, she loves reading, discovering new perspectives, and cherishing moments playing with her two-year-old son.

Connect with Akshata on LinkedIn

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