6.1 Exploring your digital carbon footprint
Sustainability is now essential, and part of the digital transformation that organisations need to consider. In this section we consider what HEIs can do to manage their carbon footprint.
‘IT is often one of the biggest contributors to an education institution’s own carbon footprint, with one UK college attributing 20% of its emissions to IT alone.’ (Exploring digital carbon footprints, Jisc [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] , 2022). Reducing digital carbon footprints whether those of organisations or individuals will become a priority as HEIs have committed to get to net zero by 2050 or before.
The Exploring digital carbon footprints report from Jisc focuses on source and impact of four key areas: procurement, on-premises IT, cloud technologies and remote working, which we recommend you read outside of this course due to its length.
In the video below Scott Stonham, the author of the report, provides an overview of the key areas of the report.
Download this video clip.Video player: hyb_1_2022_sep109_exploring_digital_carbon_footprint_report_compressed.mp4
Transcript
SCOTT STONHAM
I was recently invited by Jisc to work with them on what turned out to be a very timely and very interesting report on digital carbon footprints. They wanted to raise the discussion. Set a line in the sand and start talking about digital carbon footprints. There's been – I think we all realise there have had lots of interesting conversations, some really – I mean, over the last few decades, if you look back, there's been some amazing research already that's gone into understanding the carbon footprint and the energy consumption of our technological lifestyles and the digital usage.
When we were putting this report together, we decided to focus on four areas – procurement, on-premises IT, cloud, and the kind of remote piece – because you have the procurement piece, the on-prem IT, cloud technology, as well as remote working. The purchasing piece, we really went into the scope 3 impact of purchasing, from the equipment we buy, how do we use it longer, how do we bring the philosophy and practice of refurbish, re-manufactured IT into our environments to help us stretch the lifetime of these assets so we don't have to keep buying new things.
We also looked at how do we make sure that we're implementing the right policies to ensure that once we are done with the equipment, it doesn't just get trashed or end up in a landfill or – but molten down and all of these harmful gases. There's various different approaches and tips and techniques that we can look at there, from understanding how do you get down to a product level scope 3 understanding, which can help individuals buy in to change much more than just a cost or financial incentive.
And then it also looked at – when we're thinking about the on-premise, when we're thinking about the procurement side, how do we make sure we have the right baselines to make sure that we have the right questions to ask when we're purchasing things? We talked a bit about baselines and measuring things. And it's important for us to be able to put that baseline into play, but understand that baseline is going to change as we developed our understandings further.
The procurement piece is really important because, if we look at the carbon emissions of IT in general, 80% of the carbon emissions are attributed to what's called the embodied carbon and carbon equivalent within that product. So that means that the carbon emissions that have been generated in the process of manufacturing, building, distributing your equipment.
Then of course, you have the e-waste problem as well. So, what happens to it once it's gone? Do you reuse it? Do you recycle it? Do you break it down into its minerals and reuse those? All of that is a tremendous amount of the total carbon footprint of a piece of IT. On top of that, you have the energy and the emissions that are related to the things that happen when you're using it. But it tends to be 20%.
So, if we're looking for the biggest area to focus on, it's got to be making sure that we're making wiser, more long-term decisions about the things that we are buying and what happens to them once we've finished using them. And ideally, how do we make sure that the time – the usable lifetime is longer? How do we make that a longer service time?
So, procurement is really important. But not all the information is there yet. And this is one of those things to do with uncertainty in working in a world where we don't know everything, but we need to. So, this is where we can start looking at scope 1, scope 2, scope 3 within the GHG protocol as well. Scope 1, just to recap, is the energy that we buy and we consume, scope 2 is the energy and the emissions associated from running our buildings and our fleets around. Everything else goes from the products and services we buy and the emissions that have been generated in producing and distributing those, through to where our money is being used, in the pensions and our investments, through to the energy being used by the end users of our products, and our staff, and our teams.
There's 15 categories of scope 3. It's the lion's share of all emissions for all organisations. Within that scope 3, the purchasing of services and goods is, again, the chunk of that. That is around 90% of most people's scope 3 is in that, 70 to 90%. So that is something that supply chain and procurement has control over. In on-premises section, we looked primarily at things like the primary technology you would imagine an IT organisation being responsible for – so laptops, screens, mice, and all sorts of other things.
But the other thing that we've got to think about is the world of IT is also stretching now into our buildings and our estates as well. As things are becoming smarter, smart buildings, our buildings are a tremendous – have a tremendous environmental impact, but they can also have a more positive impact as well if we think about them carefully.
And IT is being enabled – is being put into place to help enable that as well. So, on-prem side, it's not just about laptops and servers, it's about other things related to IT as well. Cloud is an interesting area because, again, we kind of think of cloud as being out of sight, out of mind, most of the time. But there is a cost to storing data, there's a cost to accessing it, cost of processing it. And that's not just, obviously, a financial cost, there's a carbon cost there as well.
So, we looked at some of the things that we can do to help understand what those costs are and some of the things that we can do to help cut those things down. There are applications that we all have running in the cloud all the time that we don't need all the time. There are HR systems running – sitting there spun up on the servers that we don't need if the organisation is on holiday or out of season. So, there are things we can do there.
There are – from all of the major manufacturers, cloud providers, they provide now their own scorecards, their own carbon dashboards as well. So, understanding they're there and knowing how to use them can help bring awareness. The big piece of this as well is bringing out that data and making sure we understand what that data is so we know what the baseline is, and again, so we can improve it.
From the remote point of view, we looked at the cost of energy. How do we understand the energy that's being used by our workforce? How do we improve the access to equipment in a way that means that we're not adding extra carbon footprint for – I don't know, if your laptop breaks down, you don't have to go into the office to replace that and then come back again to get a new one. How do we solve things in a smarter way?
So, all of that is in the report. And there's a lot of different tips and tricks from how do you optimise fan speeds in an on-premise data centre, through to how could you, maybe, use a smart plug like this to understand and gamify change through different departments, but also through remote working and remote learning as well.
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You may wish to read the following articles on OpenLearn by Scott Stonham that provide further insights:
- Reducing the digital carbon footprint of the cloud
- Reducing the carbon footprint of on-premises IT
- How we can all tackle our digital carbon footprints
- Reducing digital carbon footprint through responsible procurement
- Digital carbon footprints and remote working
- How can corporations reduce digital carbon footprints
- What is a digital carbon footprint?
The strategy for reducing your digital carbon footprint needs to be considered alongside all elements of organisational development. If this is an area you have an interest in we would recommend you review the Hybrid working: Organisational development course within this collection.
As organisations adopt more sustainable practices, you as an individual need to be open to new ways of working, and commit to changes you can make both in your professional and personal lives.
Digital carbon emissions can be difficult to visualise as how often do you think about what is involved for technology to exist? When you talk about cloud computing what image comes to mind?
At a basic level the cause of the rising digital carbon footprint is due to:
- manufacturing and shipping of parts and products
- powering and cooling of technologies infrastructures
- disposal of electronic waste (e-waste)
- behaviour of consumers.
Manufacturing processes are not always sustainable, data centres (the cloud – the physical servers that store and process data) consume energy continually and require cooling ventilation. Electronic devices require energy to run, and e-waste can be difficult to recycle due to the non-renewable resources within products.
Activity 22 Reducing your digital data carbon footprint
Timing: 10 minutes
The amount of digital data within organisations grows daily, and managing this is challenging. While organisations will have policies, processes and automated systems to try to help reduce redundant data, some of these are dependent on individuals to manage digital data responsibly.
In the video below Scott shares insights into how digital data impacts digital carbon footprints and the measures organisations and individuals can take. As you watch, make notes on areas you believe could be easily adopted, and commit to changes you can make as an individual.
Download this video clip.Video player: hyb_5_2022_sept116_managing_data_for_the_future_compressed.mp4
Transcript
SCOTT STONHAM: In order to make some of these changes, we really need to nudge these behavioural changes, kind of, incentivise these behavioural changes. And in the digital realm, there are certain things that we can look at and communicate.
And I think the key to making this happen is knowing what to measure and knowing what to communicate. And then once we've measured something and created a baseline, we can reward for improvement against that baseline. But first of all, we need to get that baseline.
So, there's different areas we can look at. A few of them we touched on in the report, as well. An example would be data storage. Data storage is out of sight, out of mind, unless you've got these old-fashioned – oh, I’ve got one over here – hard disks you plug-in, you don't really think about where your data is being stored. And we think, again, digital is carbon-free. It's not. Digital is not carbon-free.
Storing data in the cloud, getting it to the cloud, reading it back from the cloud, has a carbon footprint. In fact, I think it was Stanford University said that storing 100 gigabytes of data would generate about 0.2 tons of carbon emissions a year.
I mean, there's a lot of 100 gig chunks of data just sitting around doing nothing. There's another piece of research. I think, it came from Jisc, actually, that said that 90% of data is generated, and stored, and never used again.
So, there's all this data that's just left around. Now, in terms of the measurement piece, we could start off by measuring how much data do individuals have dotted around by working out how often this data is being accessed and utilised and finding those pieces of data that have been sitting there for ages, and just not done anything with.
And then working out how to communicate to those people. How do they just get rid of it? How do they get rid of it? Make it easy.
As soon as you make anything more than two steps, then people are not going to do it. So, you've just got to make it easy, two or three steps, and it's going to be done. But they've got to know what they're going to do and why they're going to do it.
So that's a measuring, communicating, and incentivising based on data storage. Another one could be sharing huge documents and emails, replying all of these things. The data is there for us to analyse. It's there sitting in our systems.
We just need to figure out what it is and how we communicate that in a way that allows people to make simple changes. The other one could be video calls, as well. Incentivising people to turn the video off for even five minutes of a one-hour call can make a big difference.
And again, that can be tracked through the systems, as well. So, measure, communicate, and reward for the good behaviour. But it requires us being able to set those baselines. And that's what we need to work on first.
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The Exploring Digital Carbon report includes simple tips that can help reduce carbon footprint and tools to help understand your emissions, including the following.
- Consider how much you are using your smartphone (the average usage is 2.5 hours day).
- Reduce the brightness of your monitor.
- Turn off devices, even in ‘stand-by mode’.
- Reduce the use of email – read the article ‘The hidden cost of your emails on the planet’
- Simplify email signatures – remove unnecessary images.
- Delete electronic files and emails you no longer need and empty your deleted items folders.
- Download instead of stream audio and video.
- Unsubscribe from enewsletters you no longer want to receive.
- Extend the life of your products – do you really need the latest model? Think of the four Rs: reduce, repair, reuse, recycle.
In this video Scott provides further tips and advice on how you can reduce your digital carbon footprint.
Download this video clip.Video player: hyb_5_2022_sep115_tips_for_reducing_your_digital_carbon_footprint_compressed.mp4
Transcript
SCOTT STONHAM
We've all become very accustomed to just leaving stuff on. Many things don't have a huge consumption when they're doing nothing. Typical TV today will have, if you have a relatively large screen TV and you leave that on standby, it's going to be generating, it's going to be drawing about 0.7 watts just from doing nothing, which isn't a tremendous amount, but it is some.
A smart speaker, like the one I've got over there, will generate up to I think it's 3.8 watts doing nothing, just sitting there. Now, if you think about that's doing – it's doing at least 3.8 watts, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and I don't use it all that time. I only use it when I'm awake. It's a huge amount of wasted power for something that just sits there doing nothing.
There's so many things that we've got used to just leaving on because it's either convenient or we don't actually realise that it needs to be – it is actually on. Leaving our things plugged in, our power supplies, even though they're not doing anything, they do generate – they do consume energy. So, there's this idea that I've got to – you don't standby. Turn off. Let's try and make sure we turn things off as much as we can.
There's another really simple thing we can all do, and that's to turn things down. I'm looking now at my 4K screen in front of me. It shipped with a default brightness of 95%. I've turned it down to 55%. To me, it's no different. I can use it in exactly the same way even in bright sunlight like I have here right now. But that change between 95% and 55% is saving me 10 watts every single hour of use. So that kind of all adds up, and this is just me. If we multiply that across thousands or tens of thousands of people, those 10 watts suddenly become quite significant.
And I think the other thing is it's a really obvious – a really non-obvious, I think I should say, dark mode. I never really understood the impact of dark mode, but if you've got an OLED screen on your phone or you're on your laptop or on your screen in front of you, if you're – if one of those pixels is black, it's off, not consuming any power. So actually, you can – on my phone here, this is an OLED screen. If I use dark mode all the time, I can get almost 30% more battery life out of this, meaning I have to charge it much less than I used to. Again, just a small thing, but multiply that by tens or thousands, and we've got quite a cumulative effect.
There's always a question why – if 80% of our emissions are in the things that we buy and the things that we use, why do we need to worry so much about cutting down the energy that we use when using a laptop and switching things off? I think this is really a story about changing behaviour in a preventative way. Our use of our technology in our digital lives is only accelerating. We're finding more and more ways to use technology in ways we've never thought about before.
You see, as we go on, we create more and more things for convenience that are just creating layers and layers of laziness on top of things. Definitely moving in that direction with digital as well. As things become convenient, we've become kind of more lazy to understanding what's going on behind them. So, what I'm hoping we can do with all of this work we're talking about right now is, before we get too far down that road where that 20% is no longer 20, it's the 80 because we've solved the procurement side because we will get better at that. At some point, there'll be a tipping point where we're just using more and more and more and more and more, and that energy we're using becomes the biggest factor in that equation.
So, before we get there, I'm trying to say let's be more aware. Let's be more conscious of the things we're doing and start to build in that decision making and that awareness in everything we do. So, instead of just consuming, consuming, consuming, consuming, we start to slow things down because, as in that example about the turning the brightness down on the screen, I didn't need it at 95%, it works perfectly well at 55%. But if I hadn't done that, the rest of my life I'd be using screens at 95% instead of 55%. So, in terms of preventing things, that's where I think this conversation is starting, it's helping us prevent a runaway scenario in the future.
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