There are various approaches to sustainable software, i.e. to the application of sustainability criteria to software artifacts and software engineering, including requirements engineering. In my talk, I will give a critical (and partly self-critical) overview of some of these approaches to “green software” or “sustainable software” from the perspective of sustainable development strategies. My main argument is that the impact of software on our efforts to keep this planet in a habitable state for humans depends much more on the business models for which the software is used than on the characteristics of the software or the software development process. In particular, I will look at efficiency, consistency and sufficiency strategies of sustainable development as well as pipeline, circular and platform business models.

Lorenz M. Hilty is a full professor of Informatics and Sustainability at the University of Zurich (UZH). He is the Sustainability Delegate of UZH and Director of the Zurich Knowledge Center for Sustainable Development. Lorenz was previously the head of the Technology and Society Lab (TSL) at Empa, the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology. Together with Bernard Aebischer, Lorenz initiated the ICT4S (Information and Communication Technologies for Sustainability) conference series with ICT4S 2013 at ETH Zurich. In 2022, the ICT4S steering committee has awarded him Honorary Fellow of ICT4S.