The Problem Emissions from CPUs a big a problem. Due to the nature of software scaling, small performance increases lead to massive differences in power consumption and global CO2 emissions. The question is: how many emissions? For how many users? How much of an impact could our software optimization make? In response to my last article "The Eco-Programmer's Dilemma" many readers argued that HTML5 (electron and other such technologies) make no noticable impact on the environment, and that they are not worth eschewing in favor of more eco-friendly technologies. Let's do a brief analysis of how CO2 emissions scale for HTML5 apps.

QT vs HTML5 If we look at the whitepaper titled: "QT or HTML5" published by QT, we can see alarming statistics. The RAM requirements of a comparable QT application are 4-8X less than that of a similar HTML5 application. Furthermore, the CPU delta is comparable to using a single-core last-gen processor instead of requiring a four-core current-gen processor for a similar embedded application experience. What does this mean? It means NOT ONLY are the CPUs that run HTML5 apps putting out more pollution into the atmosphere, they are also generating more e-waste by requiring consumers to more frequently upgrade their machines to keep up with the bloat. If we accept this, it leads to the question: how much environmental damage is Slack almost directly responsible for? How many people have upgraded their laptops just to run Atom and Slack?