Carbonara: Tracking the carbon footprint during the development process

What is the project about?

IT and cloud infrastructures contribute significantly to global CO₂ emissions, as the growing demand for computing power and storage leads to increased energy consumption. However, many developers and companies are unaware of the environmental footprint of their digital activities, and there is a lack of suitable tools to measure the energy consumption and CO₂ emissions of software and infrastructure. The Carbonara project proposes an open-source solution for measuring and monitoring the carbon footprint of software and cloud infrastructures. It aims to enable developers and companies to analyze the energy consumption of applications, data processing, and cloud services and calculate the associated emissions in order to contribute to the lowest possible CO₂ emissions through informed decisions about energy consumption.

Which audience does the project adress?

Carbonara is aimed at all developers and organizations interested in environmentally sustainable software development. It is designed to be easy to use and try out as a plugin directly in the familiar development environment.

What is to be achieved?

Carbonara is being developed as a plugin for code editors. Its main function will be a code library that calculates CO₂ emissions based on cloud data and local development environments. Developers will receive real-time feedback on the emissions of their code changes. The plugin offers suggestions for reducing the carbon footprint, such as optimizing algorithms or using cloud services powered by renewable energy. Developers can also set sustainability goals.