Struggling to meet your net-zero commitments? Think sustainable IT.

Everyone loves a funny meme. But have you ever stopped to think about its effect on the climate

Every piece of digital data has a carbon footprint: every meme, email, Teams message, photo, video clip, Word document, spreadsheet, PowerPoint … They all take up space on a server, somewhere in a data centre. And data centres use power. A lot of power. The National Grid sees them taking up around 6% of UK electricity consumption by 2030.¹ Meanwhile, ICT’s share of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions has doubled since 2013, from 2% to 4%. And it’s forecast to reach 9% next year.²

Daryl Elfield

Partner

KPMG in the UK

mail

Experts reckon that in a couple of years, the world’s entire supply of renewable energy won’t be enough to power our data storage needs.³ If like many firms, yours has pledged to reduce its emissions – or even achieve net zero operations – then you’ll need to factor in the impact of your IT systems.

All the data you’re storing may be a good place to start. Not least because research suggests that some 68% of it is only ever used once by organisations.⁴ Yet there it sits on your servers (or those of your cloud providers), using energy and driving emissions.

But thinking about how people use data within the business is just the tip of the sustainable IT iceberg. What about the emissions embedded in the manufacture of your enterprise hardware, and the devices your employees use? How much power does it take to run your software applications? How do you manage e-waste? And most importantly of all: what can you do about all of this?

9% share of ICT's greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions forecast for the next year.

Set your sustainable IT baseline

You can’t set off on your digital carbon reduction journey without knowing where it begins. So start by measuring your ICT’s carbon footprint. That may seem obvious, but most executives (57%) don’t actually know the extent of their firm’s digital emissions.6

We recommend that you align your benchmarking activity to the GHG Protocol ICT Sector Guidance and Product Standard. This enables you to get a full picture of GHG emissions across your whole ICT estate, including all major public cloud providers and digital products.

Benchmarking your emissions will allow you to establish reduction targets and monitor your progress against them. Not sure where to start?

There are ready-made tools that can help you evaluate your IT emissions, which are available from companies like GoCodeGreen. Its tools provide a detailed view of your current position across your carbon estate. And they offer insights into what action you can take to have a concrete impact – whether that’s changing your cloud or energy provider or reviewing your development practices.

So, plenty to think about next time an amusing meme lands in your inbox.