Technology strategies that can drive sustainability

Organisations can lead with data, leverage technology systems to drive decision-making, and derive benefit from the cloud to reduce their carbon emissions

By now, it’s become clear that investors, regulators, customers, and supply chain partners are demanding greater transparency into organisations’ climate and sustainability efforts, and business leaders are looking for data quality and accuracy to measure carbon footprint, supply chain optimisation, and green revenue in real time. Nearly a third of 2,000 C-suite executives in 21 countries said the difficulty of measuring their organisations’ environmental impact is a significant barrier to these efforts, according to a Deloitte survey.

CIOs are well positioned to help their business counterparts understand technologies and strategies that advance sustainability objectives. Most of today’s technologies – big data analytics, advanced AI, the internet of things (IoT), edge computing, blockchain and distributed ledgers, cloud, and more – have applications for migrating to low-carbon systems. How CIOs apply those technologies, in collaboration with other C-suite leaders, can be fundamental in advancing an organisation’s sustainability agenda.

To steer these efforts, CIOs have a critical role to play in helping their organisations evaluate internal processes to ensure sustainability data is available and trustworthy, better leverage technology to support decision-making, and make the most of the cloud.

Paving the Way Through Data and Insights

Rashmi Kumar, senior vice president and CIO for Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), says CIOs can support the process of improving data quality, accessibility, and traceability.

“As CIOs, we play an important role in positioning our organisations to provide that data, that insight, to our business partners so they can run their departments more sustainably,” she says.

Developing an integrated platform for sustainability reporting may help organisations improve their data sourcing, collection, and validation and accelerate the process of preparing – and even drafting – reports. Setting up these sustainability data management systems may require CIOs to develop new processes for automating sustainability data collection, aggregation, analysis, reporting, and collaboration with partners.

Once adopted, these streamlined reporting systems can enhance the information that board members and senior leaders use to monitor, develop, and adapt an organisation’s sustainability strategy. As sustainability reporting standards and frameworks become more uniform, companies can better rely on technology to enhance transparency and more clearly communicate nonfinancial information to stakeholders.

Leveraging Technology Systems to Drive Decision-Making

Delivering on compliance and regulatory requirements is only half the data equation. Companies increasingly face demands from consumers for data on sustainability and other environmental, social, and governance properties from the companies they buy from. In response, companies are working to make this data more available.

In one example, the Gemological Institute of America (GIA), which sets global standards for evaluating diamond quality, is adopting blockchain technology to collect data on diamond sourcing – a critical step in giving consumers the information they want about the origins of their diamonds and the social and economic impact their purchase has in source countries.

“We collect a lot of information related to the social and environmental impact in Botswana, South Africa, Namibia, and other countries,” says Pritesh Patel, GIA’s senior vice president and COO. “We started a pilot program on a blockchain platform to trace provenance.”

Blockchain creates a verifiable tracer across the entire value chain – from the mining operation through diamond exchanges, jewellery makers, and retailers – all the way to the consumer. The more diamonds with origin data that follows them through the supply chain, the more informed decisions consumers can make.

While many organisations have some level of insight into their current environmental impact, a significant area of opportunity for CIOs could be optimising and creating integrated systems – both internally and externally – to effectively measure, monitor, and uncover areas for reducing waste and the organisation’s carbon footprint.

“If you think about how companies manage their supply chains or their finances or their personnel, all of that is mediated through enterprise applications,” says Jedidiah Yueh, CEO of Delphix and founder of SustainableIT.org, a nonprofit organisation led by technology executives committed to advancing sustainability through technology leadership. “Companies are going to need to manage sustainability through technology, just like they do all major processes and functions.”

Many existing measurements for carbon emissions aren’t precise enough to assess changes for specific technology. CIOs may want to consider using carbon proxies, which can make it easier to connect carbon to whatever is being measured. Electricity, for example, is a carbon proxy for the fossil fuel used to generate it. Therefore, reducing electricity demand reduces the carbon it is responsible for emitting.

Partnering with the business through data and insights to help leaders make environmental sustainability decisions is critical. This can vary by industry and organisation. In some cases, it may be necessary to train business partners or offer training across the organisation to ensure that sustainability goals are being monitored and met.

In one example of a CIO driving climate motivated transformation, HPE identified opportunities to extend the life of IT assets and reduce material waste for their customers. Kumar noted that HPE processed more than 3 million assets returned to its Technology Renewal Centres and was able to remarket or reuse nearly 90% of them.

Looking to the Cloud

In addition to managing data, moving to the cloud—including picking a provider that is committed to a zero- or carbonneutral footprint and adopting efficient migration approaches—can be critical to meeting sustainability goals. If a cloudfirst option isn’t feasible, organisations can look for co-location sites.

Organisations that ultimately elect to keep their data centres on-site can consider locations with natural cooling mechanisms, invest in cocooning to keep storage and warehouses cold, and use green coding to increase efficiency. They should also develop a targeted approach for deploying innovative technology with a specific goal of reducing environmental impact.

By making sustainability an integral part of technology investment decisions on issues such as cloud migration, green coding, 5G, blockchain, virtual reality, and IoT, CIOs can lead their organisations’ efforts to reduce carbon emissions as well as waste and accelerate sustainability strategies.

“We collect a lot of information related to the social and environmental impact in Botswana, South Africa, Namibia, and other countries.”