apidays New York 2025 - Building Green Software by Marissa Jasso & Katya Dreyer-Oren (Heroku)

Building Green Software: How Cloud-Native Platforms Can Power Sustainable App Development
Katya Dreyer-Oren, Lead Software Engineer at Heroku (Salesforce)
Marissa Jasso, Product Manager at Heroku (Salesforce)

apidays New York 2025
API Management for Surfing the Next Innovation Waves: GenAI and Open Banking
May 14 & 15, 2025

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Transcript

1. Building Green Soware Marissa Jasso, Product Manager Katya Dreyer-Oren, Software Engineer How Cloud-Native Platforms Can Power Sustainable App Development
2. Who are we? Lead Software Engineer, Heroku Marissa Jasso Katya Dreyer-Oren
3. Trolley problem
4. Trolley problem
5. "The Cloud" abstracts away the truth
6. "The Cloud" abstracts away the truth AWS US-east-1
7. Environmental Impact of Cloud Computing
8. What is Heroku?
9. Heroku takes care of… What is Heroku? A powerful platform, that seamlessly handles the key building blocks Security & Networking Scaling & Continuity Developer Experience Integrations DevOps Unique Digital Experience Infrastructure
10. Salesforce Climate Competition Improve Sustainability Make/Save Money
11. What is Heroku’s roadmap for sustainability? — Crowdfunding Company for Energy Financing “What is Heroku doing with sustainability reporting? AWS is providing it now.” — Public Comms Industry "How can I make the websites running on Heroku more carbon friendly? I checked here and our websites are performing badly www.websitecarbon.com" — LED Manufacturer “How can I share my carbon values and trends for the platform to the rest of the business?” — Solar Platform Company “Our sustainability policy is a significant part of our business and our hosting services account for a large part of our environmental impact. We do projections of where various providers and data centers sit in terms of renewable energy use and CO2e footprint. Your plans will help us argue for continued use of Heroku. — Nonprofit Digital Agency As a company dedicated to sustainability, it’s deeply important that we reflect our own values in our tech stack. We need this from Heroku. — Fashion Sustainability Company “We manage 50+ different theatre booking websites, and we want our customers to know we’re sustainable. We already checked on the sustainability of websites run on Heroku and we’re not thrilled with the results.” — Livestream Company
12. Heroku platform structure INTERACTION NETWORKING [Edge + Routing] RUNTIME EXTENSIONS Web Dashboard API Flow Git Ops Elements Marketplace External Integrations Salesforce Integration Private Space CLI, IDE Language + Framework Support Heroku Buttons 12 Factor CONTROL PLANE (Orchestration, Metering + Telemetry) INFRASTRUCTURE SERVICES CI/CD Cloud Native Buildpacks Build Pipelines Integration Tests Deployment Runtime k8s Compute + Networking Data Postgres Key-Value Kafka AI Inference Agents INFRASTRUCTURE DEVEX Integration - Lifecycle Mgmt - Automation - Configuration - Provisioning - Autoscaling
13. Step 1 Get recs and insight Step 2 Take action Step 3 Eco-routing of traffic by routing to cleaner data centers and/or off-peak grid utilization Step 4 App is deployed eco-consciously Step 5 Manage through Sustainability Dashboard Update, observe, repeat Case Study: Heroku's Sustainable App Dev Platform
14. Contextualized Insights on App Power Consumption Recommendations on app hosting based on timing and location Knowledge of how app usage patterns affect environment Off-peak utilization: Reduced load to high peak power grids Cost Savings for Heroku & Salesforce Cost Savings passed to customer Heroku App Using Climate- Conscious Decisions Impact: Reduced Emissions and Cost Savings Eco-routing: Cleaner energy consumed by switching to data centers using greener power mixes Eco-Conscious Decisions: Financial Benefit: Input: Knowledge and Guidance Case Study: Heroku's Sustainable App Dev Platform
15. How to calculate energy usage?
16. How to calculate energy usage? Public APIs/tooling can provide this data Electricity Maps Understand where electricity in specific areas comes from and how much CO2 was emitted to produce it
17. How to calculate energy usage?
18. How to calculate energy usage? BoaviztAPI Evaluates the environmental impact of digital technologies Public APIs/tooling can provide this data Electricity Maps Understand where electricity in specific areas comes from and how much CO2 was emitted to produce it
19. How to calculate energy usage?
20. So how does this save anyone money? Source: https://www.wri.org/insights/setting-record-straight-about-renewable-energy “In the U.S., the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) associated with onshore wind ($24-46/MWh) and utility-scale solar ($31-111/MWh) is now less than that of almost all gas-fired power production.”
21. So how does this save anyone money? Source: https://www.solarreviews.com/blog/peak-hour-electricity-explained
22. So how does this save anyone money? Lower energy costs Lower cost-to-serve Higher profit margin Pass discount to customers
23. Subscription Management Invoice/billing Staging/test applications Automated marketing emails Invoices Inventory management Invoices/Billing Automated safety reports Inventory management Finance Retail Manufacturing / Automotive Tech & Media Healthcare Insurance Quoting Invoices/billing Use Cases Across Industries Patient Reports Insurance Billing
24. What now?
25. What now? Sustainable web design Reduce data retention Optimize queries Work with B Corps Decommission resources Tactical changes Start small Be vocal Connect with 💰 Create targets Structural changes
26. Bring the problem closer
27. Q&A
28. Thank you
29. Let's stay connected Marissa's LinkedIn Katya's LinkedIn