A survey of energy concerns for software engineering

Abstract

There is growing attention to energy efficiency in the software engineering field. This has been driven by modern technologies, for example, Internet of Things (IoT), Social Networking Services (SNS) and quantum computing. In addition to this, recent trends and concerns such as Environment, Social, and Governance (ESG) and human/societal/environmental well-being for responsible Artificial Intelligence (AI) have accelerated the use of energy efficient software. Despite this, energy concerns in this field have been less explored and studied. This limitation results in falling short to address and overcome greenability issues at the software level, and leaving critical challenges to be solved in this space. This study aims to address this limitation and fill the gap between previous studies. We survey green in software engineering framed by the ten knowledge areas of software engineering to not only cover the entire development life-cycle but also widen the scope of discussion to software process, method, and model management. Based on our comprehensive investigation, we discuss open challenges, trade-offs and implications of this study for both researchers and practitioners.