Approach
Firstly, an IT Sustainability Vision was created covering the Why, What and How. This greatly aided communication and engagement and was essential to ensure that we had a clear ‘North Star’ for the team. Then a standard framework was used to assess all material areas of Technology using spend as an initial proxy (click the link here to view the framework). This was refined through a sustainability lens and resulted in a number of focused programme workstreams including Carbon Modelling, Vendor Management and IT Procurement, Cloud Optimisation and GreenOps, Application Rationalisation and Hardware optimisation. The programme was shaped around a phased delivery approach. Phase 1 – Accurately defined the Carbon Baseline and added controls into all new change initiatives to ensure that sustainability is considered in everything ‘we [Technology] do’ going forward. Engagement with key strategic vendors created a coalition of the willing and passionate. Phase 2 – Improved the current IT estate to leverage the best practise across the enterprise and make all areas efficient. Where possible, inflight initiatives would be used to deliver quick wins where their objectives aligned to sustainability goals. For example, existing Application Rationalisation which had a cost reduction/ agility objective could also provide excellent greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction opportunities offering a win-win. Phase 3 – Address the longer term and more intransigent areas that will be more difficult to decarbonise fully, for example, network hardware and End-User- Computing (EUC) devices. Overall, an iterative and evolutionary approach is being taken – this is a marathon, not a sprint. It requires relentless focus to ensure the customer can halve emissions by their interim target and then halve them again repeatedly in time to achieve their Net Zero goal.
Shaping an IT Sustainability Programme to achieve Net Zero Emissions by 2030.
Our customer is a leader in the Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) sector with deep expertise in the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of the products they create and sell. They are a leader in reporting their enterprise emissions including their complex supply chain. However, in the IT domain they were less mature in assessing their specific carbon footprint. They recently set a new IT Strategy and now wanted to define a programme of work to confidently deliver a Net Zero emissions target for Technology by 2030.
Challenge
Outcome
In planning any journey successfully, it is vital to know where you are starting from! As an organisation, an overall model had been created which provided an assessment of the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions for the various business units, geographies, and functions. The IT function represented a relatively small part of these emissions and hence estimating its footprint using global assumptions was initially adequate. However, this generic model did not represent the current state of the IT function accurately and did not provide a solid baseline to understand where they should prioritise their decarbonisation activities. Challenge 1 - Agree an approach to developing an accurate Carbon Model for IT to clearly show where the largest liabilities were and which levers to pull to impact these. Challenge 2 - Ensure that the current year objectives were not jeopardised by a new initiative being implemented mid-year. Challenge 3 - Tell the story of sustainability robustly and persuasively to demonstrate that IT could deliver appropriate benefits to the group whilst also protecting the planet.
Through a robust shaping phase, we have clearly articulated a North Star for the programme and delivered an accurate view of where Technology is today. This is half the battle. Next is to ensure that everyone agrees that an accelerated Sustainability journey is worthwhile and one that should be made now. By aligning sustainability goals to the Enterprise and IT Strategy we make it much easier to get this collective agreement and ensure that we achieve a win-win. Use of Green Energy in Data Centres and Cloud instances is an excellent lever for Sustainability, but the greenest energy is the energy you don’t use. Therefore, Application Simplification and Green Development practises are excellent bed fellows for sustainability and have helped build a robust business case.
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real change • real difference
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