Green Software Foundation: On a mission to decarbonize software

When Hussain and Podder met at a Sustainability Hackathon as jurors and realized the positions of their two organizations were aligned, they knew they had to collaborate. Other large organizations were also interested. All agreed that instead of having bilateral or trilateral agreements, it would be more efficient to form a foundation.

Founding members — Accenture, Microsoft, Thoughtworks, GitHub, Goldman Sachs, WattTime, The Green Web Foundation, and Leaders for Climate Action — launched Green Software Foundation, whose mission is to reduce the total change in global carbon emissions associated with software. The foundation started in 2021 and has more than 60 members today, a mixture of corporates, academia, and nonprofits, all working together toward the same goal.

A drive for actionable solutions

Well before Green Software Foundation got its start, when climate stewardship was only a conceptual idea, companies routinely published Corporate Software Responsibility (CSR) reports and issued press releases about their commitment to sustainability. But these efforts were short on actual quantitative accomplishments, and critics were quick to call them out for “greenwashing,” alleging the announcements served only to improve the organization’s optics.