Digital transformation and sustainability, how to balance both
We are living in a digital age. However, the planet on which we are living is not digital; it is physical and its resources are finite. As a result, any trade-off between digital transformation and sustainability must be counted with care, not just in terms of the value to business and society, but also the cost to the Earth.
In pre-pandemic times, digital transformation and sustainability often appeared together towards the top of the business agenda. However, recent research from Dassault Systèmes, conducted with analyst firm Tech-Clarity, found coronavirus caused 38 per cent of organisations globally to decrease attention on environmental sustainability, while 18 per cent put it on hold completely. The same survey found 46 per cent of organisations have increased their focus on digitalisation.
The trend is understandable, even beneficial, says Séverine Trouillet, global affairs director, EuroNorth, at Dassault Systèmes. “While this may look like businesses are neglecting the planet to focus on immediate priorities, going digital is a leap in the right direction,” she says. “By reducing reliance on travel and paper-based evidence, and increasing their ability to collaborate virtually, companies are effectively reducing their carbon footprint.”
Any COVID-induced conflict of interest between drivers of digital transformation and sustainability needs resolving, however, with environmental expectations on the rise, says Tom Shelton, head of marketing at solutions provider boxxe. “Consumers are now much more likely to interrogate and take note of ways in which companies are handling environmental responsibilities, something not unnoticed by industry leaders. As the demand for sustainability grows, so will boardroom conversations,” he says.
The first potential conflict to resolve is the carbon footprint of the digital infrastructure itself. According to the International Energy Agency, datacentres accounted for around 200 terawatt-hours of electricity consumption in 2019, towards 1 per cent of global use. However, global internet traffic surged almost 40 per cent between February and mid-April this year.
Some datacentre and cloud providers are cleaner and greener than others, though, says Duncan Grierson, founder and chief executive of sustainable investing platform Clim8 Invest. “It is true datacentres are themselves energy hungry, however many of the big cloud providers, such as AWS and Google, are now buying in much of their energy needs from solar and wind.”
In fact, last year Google announced plans to invest up to $2 billion more in clean power, negotiating the biggest renewable energy deal in corporate history. Then, in September, the company declared it had eliminated Google’s entire carbon legacy through the purchase of offsets to account for all operational emissions prior to becoming carbon neutral in 2007.
As well as publicly cleaning up its act, the tech community is also providing us with tools to calculate the comparative carbon cost of service-provider choices we make.
