Goldman Sachs has become the inaugural financial services firm to join the newly established Green Software Foundation, a collaboration initiated by Microsoft, Accenture, GitHub, and ThoughtWorks.
This nonprofit organization aims to foster a reliable ecosystem consisting of individuals, standards, tools, and best practices for creating environmentally sustainable software. The founding partners emphasize the necessity for the software industry to engage in unified, proactive measures in response to the global climate emergency, despite their individual commitments to this cause.
According to a recent statement, “Data centers worldwide currently account for approximately one percent of global electricity consumption, a figure projected to rise to between three and eight percent over the next decade. It is crucial that we tackle this challenge as a sector.”
The foundation is actively inviting additional organizations to participate, with a mission to guide the software industry in aligning with the broader goals of the information and communications technology sector, which aims to achieve a 45% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 in accordance with the Paris Climate Agreement.
Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president, remarked, “The scientific consensus is unequivocal: we are facing an urgent carbon crisis. Collaborative efforts will be essential to develop innovative solutions that significantly reduce emissions.”
Goldman Sachs’ decision to become a general member of the Green Software Foundation follows its recent participation in OS-Climate, an initiative hosted by the Linux Foundation aimed at redirecting global investments towards zero-carbon emissions through comprehensive open-source datasets and evaluation tools.