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[2602.19718] Carbon-Aware Governance Gates: An Architecture for Sustainable GenAI Development
Summary
The paper proposes Carbon-Aware Governance Gates (CAGG) to integrate sustainability into Generative AI development, addressing the increased carbon footprint from governance mechanisms.
Why It Matters
As Generative AI becomes integral to software development, its environmental impact is a growing concern. This paper's CAGG framework aims to balance governance and sustainability, providing a structured approach to reduce carbon emissions in AI processes.
Key Takeaways
- CAGG introduces a framework to manage carbon emissions in AI development.
- It includes components like an Energy and Carbon Provenance Ledger and a Carbon Budget Manager.
- The framework aims to enhance accountability and sustainability in AI-assisted software development.
Computer Science > Software Engineering arXiv:2602.19718 (cs) [Submitted on 23 Feb 2026] Title:Carbon-Aware Governance Gates: An Architecture for Sustainable GenAI Development Authors:Mateen A. Abbasi, Tommi J. Mikkonen, Petri J. Ihantola, Muhammad Waseem, Pekka Abrahamsson, Niko K. Mäkitalo View a PDF of the paper titled Carbon-Aware Governance Gates: An Architecture for Sustainable GenAI Development, by Mateen A. Abbasi and 5 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:The rapid adoption of Generative AI (GenAI) in the software development life cycle (SDLC) increases computational demand, which can raise the carbon footprint of development activities. At the same time, organizations are increasingly embedding governance mechanisms into GenAI-assisted development to support trust, transparency, and accountability. However, these governance mechanisms introduce additional computational workloads, including repeated inference, regeneration cycles, and expanded validation pipelines, increasing energy use and the carbon footprint of GenAI-assisted development. This paper proposes Carbon-Aware Governance Gates (CAGG), an architectural extension that embeds carbon budgets, energy provenance, and sustainability-aware validation orchestration into human-AI governance layers. CAGG comprises three components: (i) an Energy and Carbon Provenance Ledger, (ii) a Carbon Budget Manager, and (iii) a Green Validation Orchestrator, operationalized through governance policies and re...
