The environmental impact of digital technology use has risen up the agenda for organisations worldwide. Digital technologies account for 3.7 percent of total global greenhouse gas emissions, with accelerating digital transformation accounting for a large part of this figure.
Understanding how much energy is consumed by servers, data centres and devices – and how activities such as cloud computing and video streaming increase consumption – is key to understanding an organisation’s total environmental footprint.
Tracking overall environmental impact can be complex for businesses – but it is increasingly necessary as sustainability becomes a growing business imperative. Carbon reduction is being driven by the push for businesses to deliver environmental, social and governance (ESG) reporting.
Although energy consumption is important for IT sustainability, extending the useful life of installed IT equipment and minimising electronic waste also play key roles. Businesses often don’t fully understand how much energy their IT function is responsible for. IT asset management (ITAM) helps to unravel the complexity of IT operations and can assess how vendors contribute to an organisation’s environmental footprint. ITAM assessments help businesses to begin their sustainability journey by enabling them to make better-informed IT decisions so they can minimise environmental risk – and track how sustainability initiatives are actively reducing carbon use on an ongoing basis.