Emphasis on Sustainability

As more organizations commit to supporting environmental, sustainability and governance (ESG), IT decisions will hinge on improving their carbon footprints. McKinsey, which published a report in September on how CIOs should create an ESG strategy, said the need is more significant than its consultants had initially anticipated.

According to the report, enterprise technology, in aggregate, emits roughly 350-400 megatons of carbon dioxide equivalent gases (CO2e). “Enterprise technology makes up 1% of all greenhouse gas emissions,” said senior partner Jeffrey Lewis. “To put that into perspective, that’s the equivalent of all of the emissions of the United Kingdom.

Lewis said the other surprise was that data center infrastructure isn’t the most significant culprit.

“Enterprise data centers run by the technology organization, while a core driver are not the largest driver of emissions for an enterprise — end-user devices in the enterprise actually makeup 50-100% more emissions on average than the data centers run by IT.”

According to the report, laptops, tablets, smartphones, and printers generate one-and-a-half-to-two times more carbon globally than hardware in data centers. That’s because organizations typically have substantially more end-user devices than servers. Also, organizations replace end-user devices more frequently. While they may replace smartphones every two years and laptops may last for four years, organizations typically keep servers for at least five years. However, according to McKinsey, 19% of organizations keep their servers in products for more than five years.