  Technology use has grown rapidly in recent years. It is infused in virtually
every aspect of organizational and individual life. This technology runs on
servers, typically in data centers. As workloads grow, more serves are
required. Each server incrementally adds to the energy consumption footprint of
a data center. Currently, data centers account for more than one percent of all
power usage worldwide. Clearly, energy efficiency is a significant concern for
data centers. While many aspects of data center energy efficiency have received
attention, energy consumption is rarely considered in software development
organizations. In this work, we consider the energy consumption impacts of
fundamental software operations, and demonstrate that non-trivial energy
savings can be achieved in software by making energy-conscious decisions
regarding basic aspects of programming. This work has significant potential for
practical impact; applying the lessons learned in this study can lead to
greener sustainable software.
