Technology is providing sustainability solutions
We’re living through an era of big themes and big issues.
Many disruptive technologies mean we are reimagining how we live our lives, but they have led to a worrying digital divide. Those same technologies are also gamechanging in ways that truly matter and of the many impacts of our recent rapid acceleration to digital, the opportunity to create a more sustainable future is by far the most exciting.
Technology provides solutions to reducing our carbon footprint, eliminating waste and embracing a robust circular economy.
In research launched last month, we found that greening cloud services could lead to a global reduction of 59 million tonnes of CO2 per year. This represents a 5.9 per cent reduction of total IT emissions or the equivalent of taking 22 million cars off the road.
Through the analysis of cloud migrations for hundreds of clients globally, the report, The Green Behind the Cloud, outlines how companies can achieve the most value from environmentally friendly use and operation of cloud services.
Cloud migrations can unlock clean energy transitions through cloud-based geographic analyses, material waste reduction from better data insights and efficient drugs development as a result of faster analytics platforms. Sustainable cloud can deliver a double helix effect of shareholder and stakeholder value by simultaneously reducing costs and carbon emissions.
Businesses are under increasing pressure to help solve large socioeconomic challenges. Investors demand better environmental governance; new recruits are drawn to corporate values and consumers expect brands to act. Demonstrating purpose around sustainability and operating responsibly, while boosting profitability, is now paramount.
Those imperatives are translating into action. In the latest Accenture StrategyUNGC study, 59 per cent of chief executives say they are deploying low-carbon and renewable energy across their operations while 44 per cent see a net-zero, carbon neutral future for their company. Moreover, two thirds view technologies like cloud as critical for accelerating change and making their commitments a reality.
The United Nations climate change conference, COP26, which will arrive in Scotland this time next year, is another driver for change. It will create unprecedented access to international thinking about sustainability for local businesses, but more importantly, it will inject more urgency into the process of making us work together to implement new, more ambitious sustainability strategies.
That’s important because how we expedite the transition from traditional carbon energy sources to renewables, how we build and heat homes, how we transport goods, all require the partnership approach across society, business and government that COP’S presence brings.
How we tackle climate change and embrace sustainability is without doubt a big issue of our times. And it will be the companies that can embrace the new technologies that have the greatest capacity to drive change and who will make the biggest leaps forward, both for sustainability and for business growth.
Michelle Hawkins, MD, Accenture in Scotland