Harmonizing Technology with Sustainability with Green Software

<p dir="ltr">Here is your text with <b>correct formatting only</b>, as requested—no content has been added or changed:</p><p dir="ltr">Technology rapidly reshapes our world in the digital era, yet integrating sustainability remains a challenge. While the Green IS tradition has championed sustainable design and implementation, Green Software provides a detailed look at development practices and artifact tracing. Elevating Green Software within the IS curriculum is more than a trend—it's necessary. Guided by practitioner insights, I advocate that IS scholars and curricula embrace and champion these green principles and developer practices. Green software, akin to fields like green chemistry (Howard-Grenville et al. 2017), is driven by occupational groups concerned about minimizing carbon emissions throughout the lifecycle of their practices and artifacts. IS scholars can follow the lead and participate in practitioner-led organizations such as the Green Software Foundation, a nonprofit under the Linux Foundation, which aims to create a trusted ecosystem of standards and best practices. They champion three principles: Energy Efficiency, which emphasizes the need for software to be prudent with electricity, linking reduced energy use directly to carbon savings; Carbon Awareness, which recognizes the fluctuating carbon impact of energy based on when and where it's consumed, prompting strategies like demand shifting and shaping; and Hardware Efficiency, which considers the carbon emitted during a device's entire lifecycle, from production to disposal. These principles provide a roadmap for creating sustainable software, which IS scholars can use as debate material for courses about analytics, digital transformation, or even coding practices. Also, IS scholars can engage with the measurement of these principles. The Software Carbon Intensity (SCI) specification provides a fresh approach to quantifying software sustainability, emphasizing operational and embodied emission (Buchanan et al. 2023). Documented real-world applications, like at UBS and NTT Data, showcase the tangible benefits of this proactive design that can be discussed as courses about digital transformation. The collaborative nature of the open-source software (OSS) community plays a pivotal role in green software. Studies, li Klimt et al. (2023), underscore OSS's contribution to sustainable energy transitions. With OSS's innovation and standardization, combined with the dedication of IS scholars, we stand at the precipice of transformative, sustainable digital practices. Aligning green software practices with market demands, IS scholars can carve a path toward a harmonized, sustainable digital landscape.</p>