Perhaps I misunderstand exactly what you are saying, but running the software will consume power... the flip flops need to change states, when that happens, the flip flops dissipate heat. The software does not "call" hardware, it simply interfaces to it. The software dictates which flip flops are changed, so a power consumption could be attributed to the software, but the ability to measure this is nigh impossible...if you run power dvd, windows media player etc the API routine calls in hardware of your laptop/desktop.
ie sound chips or gpu... then of course your battery or power resources will change accordingly.
its not rocket science.
CPUs use DVFS to lower frequency of the processor when needed= lower power consumption.