How much is enough?
We're a group of researchers with a shared aim: make enough the default.
The dial above sets how much this page tries to do. It starts at enough. Drag it toward excess to watch a calm page fill with the things we've all come to accept like ads, pop-ups, autoplay, trackers. This shows that the site is getting heavier and more resource wasteful without getting any more useful.
the group
The people.
The Sufficiency Group is the people below — researchers who care about how much computing is actually enough.
University Potsdam · HTW Berlin
Want to join us? Get in touch.
the idea
Beyond efficiency.
Efficiency asks how to do the same thing with less. Sufficiency asks the harder question first: how much do we actually need? We study that question in the digital world and try to put it onto the agenda.
the framework
Four pillars of digital sufficiency.
We work on the first two, where measurement and green coding make the difference concrete.
Fewer devices, used longer. Not quietly driving replacement and e-waste.
Frugal code that resists bloat, so it doesn't inflate hardware needs over time.
Using digital technology purposefully and in moderation, not for maximal engagement.
Digitalisation oriented toward real needs and well-being, not endless growth.
the work
Publications.
Measure Once, Model Everywhere: Model-Based Per-Request Resource Consumption for HTTP — Limits
Sustainability-Aware Workload Shifting Beyond Carbon Intensity — IC4S
Resource Efficiency Software Index (RESI): Towards Software Product Comparability — SusTech
MLOX: Open-Source MLOps for the Rest of Us — CAIN
PowerLetrics: An Open-Source Framework for Power and Energy Metrics for Linux — GREENS
Sustainable Software Development: The State of Green Coding in Germany — ICT4S
Improving Carbon Emissions of Federated Large Language Model Inference through Classification of Task-Specificity — HotCarbon
Green Metrics Tool: Measuring for fun and profit — LOCO
Optimizing Green Coding Practices: Measurement Accuracy and Best Practices — Dagstuhl / PEACHES
Green Coding: Mit stromsparender Software zu einer nachhaltigeren Digitalisierung — dena
postscript
About this page.
Here's the trick: every pop-up, ad, and autoplay above is faked with a few bytes of CSS. The real page never changed size — it's still … over a single request, roughly … lighter than an average web page, and an estimated … of CO₂. That gap between the calm version and the "normal" one? That's the space sufficiency lives in.
How that's measured
Real weight & requests are read live from your browser's Resource Timing
API. The dial's climbing meter is a model of what a comparable site
would weigh, growing toward a typical ~4 MB page. Carbon uses the Sustainable
Web Design model (0.81 kWh/GB x 442 gCO₂e/kWh) against
a ~2.3 MB median page (HTTP Archive). Constants are in the page source.
support
Funding.
Our work has been supported by the following organisations.