Measuring your ICT Carbon Footprint

Greenwise-IT are acknowledged experts in measuring the ICT Carbon Footprint of an organisation. Please see the Case Study section of this Web Site to see some examples of where we have helped organisations to measure and understand their ICT Carbon Footprint.

Why you need to measure and understand your ICT Carbon Footprint

The ability of an organisation to measure the size of the ICT Carbon footprint is becoming of increasing importance because, e.g.:

• It is impossible to reduce your Carbon Emissions unless you can accurately and consistently measure those emissions.
• Increasingly conformance to regulatory and legislative requirements for organisations is being judged in terms of Carbon Emissions.
• Having measured the ICT related emissions, opportunities for reduction can be identified and prioritised, focussing on the areas of greatest commercial and environmental benefit.

For all (and more) of the above reasons it is increasingly vital that the ICT Carbon Footprint within an organisation is capable of being understood, measured, and managed in a consistent manner that is comparable over time.

What is the (ICT) Carbon Footprint?

Establishing the Carbon Footprint of an organisation can be the first step in a programme to reduce the emissions it causes.

The term Carbon Footprint is commonly used to describe the total amount of CO2 and other greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for which an organisation is responsible (footprints can also be calculated for events, products, or individuals).

The full footprint of an organisation encompasses a wide range of emissions sources from direct use of fuels to indirect impacts such as employee travel or emissions from organisations up and down the supply chain. When calculating an organisation’s footprint it is important to quantify as full a range of emission sources as possible in order to provide a complete picture of the organisation’s impact.

When measuring the ICT Carbon Footprint it is vital to include all possible sources of emissions that relate to the procurement, management, operation and disposal of the ICT equipment, and also the emissions that relate to the support and development activities of the IT Department (i.e. more than simply Tier 2 emissions – see below).

So the ICT Carbon Footprint is a measurement of the energy consumed:

• Directly by the operation of the ICT equipment in your organisation, and...
• By the activities associated with providing IT services (and support) to the business users of ICT, and...
• Potentially by the energy consumed in the manufacturing, shipping, de-commissioning etc of the ICT equipment (this is ‘optional’)

How greenWise-it can assist in calculating your ICT Carbon Footprint

In order to produce a reliable footprint, and none which is comparable over time, it is important to follow a structured process and to classify all the possible sources of emissions thoroughly. Over the years greenWise has developed a systematic approach, which is specifically intended to produce an accurate (and repeatable) IT related carbon footprint measurement.

Our measurement approach is based upon industry best practice which is the GHG Protocol produced by the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD). We have supplemented this by incorporating specific measurement practices from ISO 14064.

Our systematic approach has the following stages:

1. Specify the scope and boundary

This stage is vital because without the scope and boundary being clearly defined and agreed it is not really possible to collect meaningful information on the ICT Carbon Footprint that is comparable over time.

The first part of this is to simply agree the organisational boundaries. For example, what offices locations / countries will be included, for third party ICT service provides which customers / contracts will be included etc?

This is followed by defining and agreeing the scope of ICT responsibilities - and this is vital because only by agreeing the scope of ICT responsibilities can you truly identify all the sources of ICT related emissions that need to be measured.

To do this effectively we need to look at the scope of Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 emissions.

Tier 1 emissions are those associated with your ICT Support Operation (but do not include the direct electricity costs of running the actual ICT hardware – see Tier 2 below). This will include the emissions associated with e.g. raising and managing Incidents to resolution (including travel costs to support remote sites), the review and approval of changes, releases and refreshes into your live environment, service review meetings and reporting etc.

Tier 2 emissions are associated with the energy used to run your ICT equipment. The type of equipment included has to be defined as part of the scoping exercise, but will generally include, desktops, laptops, printers, scanners etc, all hardware in data centres, the cooling / heating for data centres, networking equipment etc (these are classed as ‘consumed’ type energy usage).

Tier 3 emissions are those associated with the production and procurement of your ICT equipment, and the disposal of the equipment (these are classed as ‘embodied’ type energy usage).

The Greenwise-IT difference

This is where the Greenwise-IT approach is very different to other organisations that offer ICT Carbon Footprint measurements. Generally these organisations will only include Tier 2 sources of emissions in their calculations. By taking this approach the integrity of the resulting ICT carbon Footprint measurement is significantly flawed. Greenwise-IT include Tier 1 and Tier 3 sources of emissions in our calculations – to give you a truly accurate measurement of the total sources of emissions associated with the management and operation of your ICT infrastructure.

2. Data Collection

This will be undertaken in a range of ways e.g. through direct energy consumption figures (where possible), by collection of individual component energy consumption figures per type of component (and overall energy consumption then calculated), and by calculations of energy usage based on IT Operational practices and frequency of such practices being undertaken etc.

The end result will be the defined carbon footprint for the IT Organisation.

The energy usage results are then converted into CO2 (tonnes) using official Defra conversion rates to give the overall ICT related Carbon Footprint.

3. Comparison with previous results

Where there have been previous carbon footprint measurements (using the same scope and boundary as defined in Stage 1), this stage will compare the results over time, and provide an analysis as to the key differences.

4. Act upon the results

The primary reason for measuring your ICT Carbon Footprint is to act upon the results and initiate actions to reduce the size and scale of the footprint.

Once the ICT Carbon Footprint has been established, this stage defines the actions required to manage and reduce those emissions. It will:

• Set and agree efficiency or emissions reductions targets
• Identify likely opportunities for IT related efficiency or emissions reduction (maybe through revised use of IT)
• Prioritise the opportunities based on environmental, technical, or financial criteria
• Take action to implement the opportunities
• Monitor the performance of the actions taken and improve as necessary

If you are interested in the above and want to know more about how Greenwise-IT can help you understand, measure and ultimately take action to reduce your ICT Carbon Footprint then contact us at enquiries@Greenwise-IT.com.