The Climate of Business #56: Decarbonising the energy hungry tech industry

Climate Change Reality

Why Germany is delaying its nuclear shutdown (AP News )

French protests highlight pressure on European leaders from energy crisis (The Wall Street Journal )

Next pandemic may come from melting glaciers, new data shows (The Guardian )

Why firewood is suddenly in high demand in Germany? (Vox )

How climate change is driving monkeys and lemurs from trees to the ground (The Washington Post )

Scientists are using microphones to determine how fast glaciers are melting (NPR )

China needs $17 trillion to meet climate goals (Al Jazeera )

Climate change is fuelling a global hunger crisis — innovation could be the answer (World Economic Forum )

Business Climate Reality

Growth in renewables saved the EU $11 billion in gas imports (Bloomberg)

Business leaders must recognise it's OK not to be OK (GreenBiz )

South Africa to unveil climate investment plan at COP27 (Bloomberg )

‘Green hushing’ on the rise as companies keep climate plans from scrutiny (Financial Times )

Watchdog bans HSBC climate ads in fresh blow to bank’s green credentials (The Guardian )

Uruguay eyes its debut ESG-linked bond to tackle climate change (Bloomberg )

?BlackRock creates Transition Capital unit to tap climate opportunities (Euronews )

World Bank’s president survives climate gaffe, but its fossil fuel policy may not (Politico )

How Walmart convinced critics it can sell more stuff and save the world (Financial Times )

Reality Check

The tech industry is crucial to the efforts of decarbonising our economy. Even if a business is not classified as a tech one, most likely there is high reliance on many products and services that maintain critical business data, secure transactions happen timely or even automate aspects of the existence of a business.????

Industry Profile??

• Information and communications technology or ICT’s carbon footprint, when considering the full life cycle of a software from development, manufacture, operation, disposal and including supply chain pathways, was 2.1%–3.9% of global GHG emissions.
• A recent study predicted that if the trends in the information and communication technology (ICT) industry continue at the current rate, the field will constitute 14% of global carbon emissions by 2040.
• Just training a single neural network could emit as much carbon as five cars in their lifetimes.
• Of the total emissions 30% of ICT’s emissions come from embodied emissions, which is the manufacturing process mainly, but 70% come from use.
• Expected growth of industry: Data centres alone consume about 2% of global electricity today and by 2030, could consume as much as 8%.
• In 2019 Bitcoin network surpassed that energy need for the entire nation of Switzerland.
• Part of Paris Agreements: Yes?

Important organisation to know

Greentech Alliance ?- a community of over 2000 companies developing Green technology products and services. You can apply here if you are building such company.

UNEP Digital Transformation Programme - The UNEP Digital Transformation (DT) subprogramme focuses on accelerating and scaling environmental sustainability by applying data, digital technologies and solutions to UNEP’s key activities, products and services and ultimately delivers on it’s key action areas – climate, nature and pollution.

Coalition for Digital Environmental Sustainability (CODES) - The?Coalition for Digital Environmental Sustainability?(CODES), is a transnational multi-stakeholder alliance created in March 2021 in response to the UN Secretary General’s Roadmap for Digital Cooperation to steer the use of digital technologies toward accelerating environmentally and socially sustainable development.

bitkom - Germany’s digital association. Founded 1999 in Berlin, we represent more than 2,000 companies of the digital economy. Our membership spans more than 1,000 SMEs, over 500 startups and virtually all global players. The organisation works extensively on sustainability projects.

Tech Nation ?- Tech Nation is the growth platform for tech companies and leaders for the United Kingdom. Tech Nation fuels the growth of game-changing founders, leaders and scaling companies so they can positively transform societies and economies. We provide them with the coaching, content and community they need for their journey in designing the future. The organisation works extensively on sustainability and net zero projects.

The Tech Industry & Sustainability?

Artificial Intelligence and associated digital technologies have extensive environmental impacts. These include:

• heavy carbon dioxide emissions linked to the energy consumption required to generate and process large amounts of data
• extracting minerals for, and manufacturing of, technological components
• e-waste

All of these environmental impacts have been noticed by regulators who have announced a series of new policies aiming to regulate the growth of the industry in a more environmentally friendly manner. Further, media attention through discourses of environmental sustainability has become more prominent.

Challenges to Net Zero Transition

• Issues with calculating an AI full carbon emissions arise because of the differences in designs, type of computer hardware used as well as the energy use and grid use.
• Grids will be different in different locations and the system can be in one location while the data centres processing can be in several locations.
• Education of consumers on how to use technology in a more conscious manner?
• Investor knowledge on how to calculate negative externalities to the planet and people created by software products?

Solutions for decarbonisation and sustainable transformation of the industry

Short-term

• Internal audits: Tech companies should evaluate the current processes followed across the value chain to highlight any unsustainable practices that may contribute to the carbon footprint. Examples could include the source of power, unused appliances being kept on, and unoptimised data centres.
• Green upgrades: Tracking the consumption of resources across the organisation. This can also include upgrades that range from energy-efficient equipment to implementing eco-friendly software within a tech organisation.
• Renewable power sources: Look for renewable sources of energy that can power the company.
• Operational efficiency: "Look for ways to reduce storage and power use at data centres. Data centre management software can improve operational efficiency by analysing bottlenecks and the performance and organisation of data to ensure optimum usage."
• Data centre temperature monitoring: "Install smart temperature control devices to reduce energy use by monitoring data centre temperature and turning cooling devices off when the data centre reaches the right temperature."

Longer-term

• Purchase renewable electricity to reduce Scope 1& 2 emissions for their offices and third party suppliers.
• Working with third party suppliers such as data centre companies and introducing or helping them to create or develop insetting projects.?
• Scope 3 emissions account for around 40-80% of the total emissions of the tech company.?
• Sustainable supplier engagement strategy reduces other environmental and social impacts in the upstream operations.
• Optimised hardware as well as identification of suitable data centre management software that helps with the timely analysis of bottlenecks, performance, and organisation of data to ensure optimum usage.
• Instal Data Centre temperature monitoring, which helps reduce energy use by turning cooling devices off when the data centre reaches the right temperature.

Incorporate energy reduction in the design of the software to ensure a more efficient use:

• Through green coding, by producing and writing software that minimises its energy consumption while in use.
• 90% of software developments leverage open-source code which is not tailored for specific uses and applications, containing redundant sections of code that end up using more processing power and giving rise to unnecessary carbon emissions.
• Software updates that reduced device obsolescence, meaning that new updates should only be done when necessary plus it can be predetermined how much energy the new version consumes compared to the last version.
• Use of virtual servers and virtualisation reduces the need for physical data centres and therefore the need of hardware.
• Designing and financing tech products which account for their externalities related to environment?
• Educating consumers to be more mindful of their technology usage

Carbon Price