CO2 Emission Efficiency as a Measurable Non-Functional Requirement: An Emission Estimation Framework

Environmental concerns and the impact of technology on climate change are now a global concern. To this effect, reducing CO2 emission is one of the factors that has been the focus of researchers, activists, and governments. This has been included in the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The emissions produced due to running software have remained largely unquantified or neglected in Carbon Accounting. This paper proposes “CO2 Emission Efficiency” as a measurable Non-Functional requirement. We propose a framework for estimating software’s CO2 emissions and compare two well-known databases, Apache Cassandra and Aerospike. The paper presents the method, process, and comparisons. The paper then considers the costs of each of these technologies and concludes that reducing CO2 emissions not only has a positive impact on the environment but can also be cheaper and reduce costs.