Energy Consumption and CO2 Emissions of a Software - Who is Responsible?

Because our climate is warming and one of the factors for climate change is CO2 emissions, the European Commission, with its Green Deal, has set a goal for Europe to be climate neutral by the year 2050. Finland has set this goal even closer in the future by the year 2035. These tight goals mean need for reduction of CO2 emissions in every field. This study aims to define software-based emissions and seek responsible parties for those emissions. This study was carried out as an interview study. Interviews were done on two Finnish projects related to Green ICT. 32 interviews were conducted between May 2022 and June 2023, consisting of 6 procurer interviews, and 26 producer company interviews. The analysis of the interviews was supported by the internal project meeting discussions among experts and a set of multistakeholder workshops. As a result, a Shared Responsibility of Software Emissions (SRoSE) framework was developed to support organizations in mapping out their software emissions and all the stakeholders linked to the software and to share the ownership and responsibility of the emissions.