On the Energy Consumption of CPython

Interpreted programming languages, like Python, are amongst the most popular programming languages. This, combined with high developer efficiency leads to many web-application backends and web-services that are written in Python. While it is known that that interpreted languages like Python are way less energy efficient compared to compiled languages like , Rust, etc., little is known about the energy efficiency of various versions of Python interpreters. In this paper, we study via a controlled lab experiment the energy consumption of various versions of the Python interpreter CPython when running a server-side rendered web-application. Our results indicate that currently the most energy efficient version is CPython 3.12. Energy consumption of CPython 3.12 can drop by more than 8% compared to previous versions.