IT Sustainability Think Tank: The Importance Of Measurement In Closing The Sustainability Gap

By Admin March 11, 2023 Post a Comment

It is now the norm for companies to have a sustainability strategy in place and a YouGov survey found that 70% of GenZ customers would pay more for sustainable products. However, sometimes there is doubt that the goals stated are not in accordance with the behavior that leads to greenwashing in the organization.

The technology sector contributes 2-4% of greenhouse gas emissions. The International Telecommunication Union estimates that digital technology alone can reduce global carbon emissions by 17 percent.

In addition, Ericsson's research shows that if all electricity came from renewable sources, the technology sector could reduce its carbon footprint by up to 80%.

Measurement is the key to measuring the gap between an organization's existence and its needs. That is, set goals for yourself, and then develop strategies for continuous, incremental improvement. Measurably updating and refining organizational strategy leads to growth.

It should not be difficult to develop a consistent definition of what sustainability means: for example, a common measure is a measure of an organization's CO ₂ (or CO ₂ equivalent) emissions. However, it is very difficult to assess emissions across a supply chain. Fortunately, now more tools have emerged in the sustainability field; Tools such as the GHG Protocol's Scope 3 estimator identify areas where emissions can be reduced. This could mean optimizing your current hardware, moving to the cloud, redesigning your services, or all three.

There are a lot of possible quick wins with hardware. Organizations that are still using servers and/or data centers can measure their electricity consumption and that power source.

Using publicly available data, it can provide fairly accurate indicators of emissions. If this is clear, there will be many options for reducing those emissions. For example, you can buy a new server and equip green units.

Alternatively, organizations should consider whether they really need the new servers. This will save you from putting your old server in the trash and reusing and reusing it. Another option is to use the device more intensively, charge more than the original package. For example, one server operating at 60% capacity will have less impact than two servers operating at 30% capacity.

Public cloud providers have many incentives for renewable energy and sustainability and are almost always more energy efficient than the average data center. Therefore, moving to the cloud will bring measurable improvements in sustainability performance. But moving to the cloud should be seen as just a start. Managed cloud services can be many times more environmentally friendly than equivalent application components running on IaaS server instances.

Another benefit is that all cloud service providers have emission measurement tools that can be used to track performance, such as the Google Cloud Platform Carbon Footprint and Amazon Web Services (AWS) Customer Carbon Footprint tools. There are some good open source tools out there.

Lastly, increasing the strength of engineering methods can be both more difficult and more controversial. For example, the context in which an organization operates can have a big impact on choosing Java over Python.

Good engineering practices such as edge caching, optimized data storage, code reuse, and efficiency almost always have a positive impact on recovery. Applications that require less computing power consume less energy, which ultimately translates to a net reduction in _CO2 emissions.

It is important to consider these factors when selecting architectural options and follow sustainable design best practices. The gains may be small in the developer stage, but they show when you move into production. Quantitative measurements are needed to demonstrate this increase.

Sustainability has entered the DevOps vocabulary as Green Ops, which focuses on improving integration and sustainable delivery while reducing emissions. A key part of this role is adding sustainability reporting to existing dashboard approaches to provide organizations with a real-time window to close sustainability gaps.

The key point is to continue to manage the transformation program with customer and organizational goals and perspectives for sustainable development. Organizations have to think big, start small and grow quickly. They need to take deliberate steps to set meaningful and measurable goals that are flexible and repeatable.