Setting up a green IT approach: a how-to guide

Climate change is one of the primary challenges of the 21st century. While digital technology is a powerful tool for progress, it is unfortunately not without its impact on the climate and the environment. How can you place ecology and respect for the environment at the heart of your organization’s values while continuing to contribute to the collective goals set?

Understanding the Situation: 

• Today, the digital sector accounts for 4.2% of global energy consumption, representing 3.8% of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) (source: GreenIT).
  According to the think tank The Shift Project:
   
  • With an annual energy consumption increase of 9%, digital technology poses a major environmental challenge.
  • By 2025, digital’s GHG emissions could be equivalent to the current emissions from cars!
     

It is therefore essential for companies to implement a responsible digital policy in order to reduce their carbon footprint and adopt a responsible approach.

How to Initiate a Responsible Digital Policy?

What is Life Cycle Analysis?

To implement a sustainable and ambitious digital approach, it is necessary to conduct a life cycle analysis (LCA) of IT tools. The LCA of a product or service encompasses all the stages of its creation/formulation, including raw material extraction, component manufacturing and assembly, distribution, use, and end-of-life management, with the aim of assessing the respective environmental impacts. Several evaluation criteria can be defined, such as energy consumption, water usage, and GHG emissions.

What Strategies Can Be Defined Based on the LCA?

From this analysis, a detailed view of a product’s life stages and associated impacts will be created. It will then be possible to deduce the best strategies to implement. The identified solutions will be adapted to each organization. Based on this observation, relevant Green IT strategies will emerge for companies. Several best practices can be easily implemented by any organization. Beyond this Green IT audit, the goal of this approach will have a threefold impact:

• Reduction of the company’s carbon footprint
• Improvement in the performance of information systems, and
• Reduction in the financial costs associated with managing the information system.

What Best Practices Should Be Implemented Within Your Organization?

1/ Implement a Responsible IT Purchasing Policy

A reasoned purchasing policy aims to reduce IT equipment consumption. To do this, one can extend the lifespan of IT equipment. The extension of the lifespan will depend on the environmental impact of the equipment defined during the life cycle analysis.

For smartphones, the LCA of the iPhone shows that 80% of GHG emissions result from the manufacturing phase: raw material extraction and product manufacturing. In practice, one action is to extend the lifespan of smartphones within the company. Thus, increasing the lifespan from 2.5 years to 3.5 years within companies could reduce smartphone GHG emissions by 26%.

For computers, extending the lifespan from 3 years to 5 years would result in a 37% reduction in GHG emissions.

Source: The Shift Project

2/ Optimize Server Usage

For a data center in France, the LCA shows that 66% of GHG emissions are generated during the usage phase (source: GreenIT). Therefore, improving the energy efficiency of servers can be extremely effective in reducing their carbon footprint. In a data center, about 40% of energy consumption comes from the cooling system. By focusing on this temperature parameter, there are several solutions currently available that can be implemented at the server room level:

• Increasing the operating temperature to over 24°C helps reduce the consumption of the cooling system and limits GHG emissions.
• Organizing racks into hot and cold aisles optimizes the evacuation of heat generated by servers.

These actions will reduce energy consumption and the financial cost of running the servers.

3/Organize the End-of-Life of IT Equipment

What are the Impacts of Electronic Waste?

The impact of waste from electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) is increasingly criticized by NGOs and the media. It affects the atmosphere, soil, and water through the release of heavy metals or chemicals. However, it remains difficult to quantify the exact negative impact of such waste on the environment. WEEE is also often exported to developing countries instead of being properly recycled in the country of origin. Therefore, establishing a transparent WEEE management system is a key aspect of a responsible digital policy. This management should prioritize the 3Rs method: Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle.

How to Put the "3Rs" Method into Practice?

• Reduction is part of optimizing purchases, as mentioned in the first best practice.
• To improve reuse, prioritize repair and refurbishment of equipment for reuse, rather than discarding faulty equipment. This practice can involve social economy companies within this value chain.
• If the device must be discarded, it should be recycled by ensuring that professional service providers are used. It is important to verify the practices of the service provider and request guarantees.

4/ Optimize Printing Usage

Although the environmental impact of printing is smaller than the previously mentioned points, it is easy to implement practices that reduce the carbon impact of printing:

• Share printers to reduce the number of devices.
• Set printing defaults to double-sided, black and white, and use ink-efficient fonts.

At the same time, these actions will reduce printing costs by lowering ink and paper consumption. Visible to employees, these actions will also kickstart a process of raising awareness about good practices.

5/ Raise Awareness Among Teams About Proper Digital Usage

One of the key aspects of a responsible digital approach is raising awareness among employees to change their habits. The goal is to engage them on various aspects and generate virtuous practices. What actions can employees take?

• Put workstations to sleep overnight and shut them down on weekends.
• Use shared folders effectively for exchanging large files.
• Systematically compress documents sent by email.

This non-exhaustive list should also be supported by training workshops so that everyone takes responsibility for these issues.

We have outlined several actions that can be easily implemented within a company to reduce the environmental impact of its information system. Such practices are a starting point. However, for effectiveness, a Green IT policy must encompass all processes, from support functions to business needs, and integrate the IT department.