Green and Sustainable Computing: Efficient Strategies, Best Practices, and Emerging Research Trends

Green and sustainable computing has evolved from a narrow focus on reducing the energy consumed by computer hardware into a broader discipline concerned with energy efficiency, distributed architectures, artificial intelligence, environmental impact, and lifecycle sustainability. This paper presents a structured review and trend analysis based on the findings reported in a recent large-scale study of 11,119 Scopus-indexed journal articles published between 1960 and 2025. The reviewed study used BERTopic with transformer-based embeddings, UMAP dimensionality reduction, HDBSCAN clustering, and temporal analysis to identify 36 research topics. This paper reorganizes those findings into an IJARSCT-style review format and synthesizes the major research directions, thematic groups, developmental stages, challenges, and future opportunities. The evidence shows that virtualization and hardware-efficiency themes have historically been important, while edge computing, AI-supported systems, neuromorphic architectures, UAV computing, and environmentally aware computation have gained research attention. The review also highlights limitations associated with database coverage, metadata quality, topic interpretation, and the use of relative topic prevalence. The resulting framework can help students and researchers understand the changing landscape of green computing and identify areas for further investigation.