Is software life cycle assessment a solved problem?

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Even with less complex systems - such as a local desktop application - the measurement methods are still relatively new. The consumption of a desktop application running on a single physical computer can still be measured with sufficient precision using standard household electricity meters. However, most systems also use an Internet connection, which means that other physical devices such as routers and switches must be taken into account in the network infrastructure. In addition, this data transmission over the network ends at another computer or server. These additional devices in complex distributed systems also tie up resources during production and consume electricity during runtime. In the case of mobile devices, different types of transmission networks - WiFi, LTE, 5G - also come into play, where power consumption can sometimes differ by a factor of 40. So as long as an electricity meter is not connected to every consumer in a distributed system, inaccuracies always have to be supplemented by estimates.

Is there a connection between data transmission and CO2 emissions?
Common free tools such as websitecarbon.com or digitalbeacon.co accept the URL of a website and return an estimate of how much CO2 is emitted when a page is accessed. The basis for the calculation is transparent and uruguay consumer email list​ shows that the volume of data transferred per visit to the website is primarily taken into account. The measured data volume is used to determine the power consumption and, from this, the CO2 emissions.

The simplified assumption that the transfer of one gigabyte of data always uses the same amount of power is problematic. The tools therefore do not differentiate which digital infrastructure is involved, whether content delivery networks are interposed and how complex the calculations on the servers are. The tools also cannot take into account whether several geo-redundant data centers are holding the requested data in the background or whether a single-board computer is answering the request.