Most places have emissions requirements for vehicles and so forth. Maybe some day we'll demand energy-efficient programming.
I've been trying to minimise redundant calculations in our CI/CD workflows, but none of our tools seem to like that.
Docker rebuilds all downstream if one bit of a step changes, GitHub Actions doesn't let you cache on local runners and requires uploading everything to their size-limited cloud cache.
I'm looking for better ways but of course no service advertises their energy efficiency. That tells something about the industry's priorities.
Today cloud providers deliberately site their facilities to make use of the cheapest tax-free electricity, which is effectively tax dodging.
I would also tax personal data. Current regulatory framework strangely assumes that personal data has no value yet entire companies are built around monetizing and claiming it as theirs. Those companies are also the biggest consumers of these DCs.
Even by taxing personal data that is being used by companies, you could realize significant energy savings as they have to discern between what they need and what they dont. Asking for someones driver license to verify their account? Tax them yearly. Suddenly companies that dont really need it find themselves searching for more energy efficient solutions since their tax dollars depend on this activity.
Unfortunately, we may not see this happen for quite some time.
Nearly all compute power in the world is used doing things that theoretically take no compute. The reason they use so much compute is it was easier to pay for that compute than pay some engineer to figure out how to use less.