KDE Eco - Building Energy-Efficient Free Software
Software has a direct affect on energy and resource consumption. KDE has the goal of providing software which does this in a way that reduces software's environmental impact.
Let’s make energy efficient software and digital sustainability part of our community. We can live up to our responsibility for this and future generations!
KDE Eco Handbook
The handbook "Applying The Blue Angel Criteria To Free Software" gives an overview of the environmental harm driven by software and how the Blue Angel ecolabel — the official environmental label of the German government — provides a benchmark for sustainable software design. Learn how Free Software's values of transparency and user autonomy foster sustainability, as well as how to set up a dedicated lab to measure your software's energy consumption! Read more
Okular Awarded Blue Angel Ecolabel
In 2022, KDE's popular multi-platform PDF reader and universal document viewer Okular became the first ever eco-certified computer program! Read More
News from the blog
Tuesday, 13 June 2023
KEcoLab: Remote Energy Measurement Lab
In this post I start my journey in Google Summer of Code (GSoC) with KDE Eco by describing progress made on the exciting project of making remote access to the Energy Measurement Lab a reality.
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Wednesday, 10 May 2023
What is Sustainable Software, After All?
"Sustainable Software" is a strategic goal for KDE, focusing on minimizing resource consumption and strengthening user autonomy. The aim is to create software that uses fewer natural resources, reduces energy consumption, and promotes user choice and privacy.
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Thursday, 4 May 2023
SoK 2023 Selenium-AT-SPI KDE Eco Power Measurement Proof Of Concept: Achieving Three KDE Goals With One Stone!
How Nitin Tejuja's work for Season of KDE (SoK) will help KDE towards its goals.
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Wednesday, 26 April 2023
Report From The German Parliament's "Sustainable by Design" Conference
In this post I report back from the German Parliament's "Nachhaltig by Design" conference, which took place in March 2023. I realize we still have a lot to figure out to ensure we minimize the impact of software on the destruction of our planet. Nonetheless, it is encouraging to see the topic of green digitisation and sustainable software receiving more attention.
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KDE's Sustainable Software Goal
Software has an impact on our future. It has an affect on energy and resource usage. KDE can deliver software which does this in a way which preserves environment and society for us and future generations. KDE can deliver Sustainable Software.
The sustainable software goal is about promoting sustainability in KDE by aligning existing activities, highlighting where our software is already sustainably designed, stimulating actions to increase sustainability, and creating standards/tools to quantify software sustainability.
FOSS Energy Efficiency Project (FEEP)
FEEP is developing tools to improve energy efficiency in Free & Open Source Software development. Design and implementation of software has a significant impact on the energy consumption of the systems it is part of. With the right tools, it is possible to quantify and drive down energy consumption. This increased efficiency contributes to a more sustainable use of energy as one of the shared resources of our planet.
Blauer Engel For FOSS (BE4FOSS)
In 2020, the German Environment Agency (German: Umweltbundesamt) released the award criteria for eco-certifying desktop software with the Blue Angel ecolabel (German: Blauer Engel). From 2021-2022, the BE4FOSS project under KDE Eco worked to advance eco-certification for resource and energy-efficient software in FOSS communities. Obtaining the Blue Angel ecolabel occurs in 3 steps: (1) Measure, (2) Analyze, and (3) Certify.
Benefits of obtaining the Blue Angel ecolabel include:
- Recognition of reaching high standards for environmentally-friendly software design,
- Differentiating free software from the alternatives,
- Increasing the appeal of adoption for consumers, and
- Promoting transparency in the ecological footprint of software.
Learn more in the KDE Eco handbook "Applying The Blue Angel Criteria To Free Software".
