Unlike a comprehensive carbon footprint assessment conducted by the CSR department, the IT carbon footprint focuses specifically on the environmental impact of digital activities such as computer hardware, data centers, cloud consumption, network, and application portfolios.
Environmental footprint calculation tools are primarily SaaS platforms that allow for the carbon footprint assessment of an IT department through data collection automation. These tools facilitate the definition and management of plans to reduce the environmental impact of digital-related activities within companies and offer an opportunity to initiate a dynamic transformation within teams.
With the evolution of data available in recent years on the environmental impacts of the digital world, IT decarbonization tooling becomes more of an IT challenge than a business one. New needs for automation and roadmap management are emerging, combining financial and environmental constraints. This will enable IT departments to make the right decisions for their IT in the future.
Tristan Vuillier
Head of Sustainability Offers, Devoteam France
Why implement an IT carbon calculation tool?
The implementation of dedicated tools for monitoring digital carbon footprints can be driven by various ambitions, including:
- Alignment with the overall company’s carbon footprint reduction strategy.
- Integration of a more precise and comprehensive IT carbon footprint into the overall CSR assessment.
- The need to establish quantified reduction plans for each department within the IT department.
- Measurement of the effectiveness of reduction plans over time and on a reliable basis.
- The ability to communicate the environmental impacts of the IT department’s services to clients.
- Continuous and automated data feeding into the tool rather than through an annual audit.
- The creation of monitoring dashboards for departmental managers and executives.
What impacts to expect on the IT department?
To initiate the reflection on implementation, it is necessary to consider the following points: what are the ambitions following the tool deployment, is it aligned with the CSR IT strategy? What level of detail is desired (emission factors or monetary calculations)? What is the calculation methodology (ADEME carbon assessment, GHG, LCA), and what is the desired reporting format?
To support the implementation of the tool, the creation of a digital sustainability reference role is recommended. This role is responsible for the construction and accuracy of the digital carbon footprint, as well as the definition and implementation of the reduction strategy. It also acts as an evangelist within the teams and serves as a bridge to the CSR and business teams.
Preparing a comprehensive repository of your IT assets is an essential prerequisite. To do this, ensure that you have a tool like a CMDB containing the necessary data (IT infrastructure, servers, network equipment, storage devices, etc.) that is continuously maintained.
Additional complementary sources such as virtual machine inventory, external service emissions, and administrative tool consoles should be anticipated.
To ensure a successful deployment, make sure you have resources trained in carbon accounting. Beyond the technical implementation, an engineering approach to defining which emission factors to consider and the standards for calculation and reporting to use (GHG, ADEME, life cycle, etc.) is necessary.
The issue of interfacing should be considered when choosing the tool, as each vendor offers different integration possibilities. Therefore, it is necessary to map the data sources for your future data collection and calculation system in advance to select the tool with the greatest potential for automation.
Examples of possible interfaces to guide your selection:
- Hardware: ServiceNow, SolarWinds
- Cloud consumption: Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, AWS
- Infrastructure usage: Nagios, Aternity
- Network: OpenNMS, Cisco.
Ultimately, to materialize the action plan resulting from your new tool’s capabilities, departmental leaders within your IT organization (application, infrastructure, workplace) must be trained to use the tool regularly, be engaged in KPI monitoring, and be committed to continuously reducing their footprint within their scope, which contributes to the overall reduction objectives of the IT department.
These new environmental footprint calculation tools are, in the end, only tools. The need to plan for the skills and resources required to configure them (mapping data sources, validating emission factors), gain adoption (objectify teams, build a community), and continually improve them (adding new data sources, refining emission factors) should be anticipated to ensure effective implementation.
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