Scoping out GHGs in IT
Owning up to our emissions.
It’s been a few weeks since COP27 in Egypt, the largest multi-governmental climate change conference in the world, which saw the release of a draft “cover decision” — the Sharm el-Sheikh Implementation Plan. While world leaders are still digesting major outcomes, last-minute agreements reinforced limiting global warming to 1.5 °C, which necessitates a 43% cut in the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from 2019 levels by 2030. The adage “you can’t manage what you can’t measure” might be overused, but it’s still true. From governments down to enterprises and all organizations within, accurate carbon accounting is mandatory to kickstart GHG emissions mitigation work. Let’s take a look at how common carbon accounting frameworks specifically impact IT organizations.
When we think about global GHG emissions and who is responsible for them, there are a few ways to slice it. At COP27, a lot of the focus is on countries. There are many nuances to calculating GHG ownership by country, but I like this simple explanation from the UNEP. While countries also submit targets for curbing their emissions — called Nationally Determine Contributions (NDCs) — they are not currently aggressive enough to limit global warming to 1.5 °C. This means we need to seek out additional paths to curb emissions.
Breaking down emissions by company provides another “slice.” It can be complicated to map corporate emissions back to a country, as multinational companies, by definition, operate and produce emissions across borders. Countries can regulate these emissions, but the responsibility of mitigation lies with the company. Today, the most widely accepted, albeit imperfect, platform for corporate emissions accounting and reporting is the GHG Protocol Corporate Standard which breaks emissions down into three scopes:
Scope 1: Direct emissions from company-owned operations such as fleet vehicles, building HVAC systems, and manufacturing.
Scope 2: Indirect emissions from purchased electricity, heating, or cooling.
Scope 3: Indirect emissions tied to both upstream activities like employee commute, travel, and purchased services, and downstream activities like product supply chain and use. These frequently intersect with other companies’ Scope 1 and 2 emissions, impacting accounting accuracy.
Avoided emissions: A newer, less widely accepted concept sometimes called “Scope 4 emissions.” This is the impact of a product in helping avoid GHG emissions — things like smart building devices and energy optimization software. While there isn’t an agreed upon framework, GHG Protocol has some guidance on tracking avoided emissions.
Most GHG disclosure programs today only require Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions. Scope 3 emissions are significantly harder to accurately calculate, mostly due to a lack of reliable data broken down by owner — think of the challenge of assigning emissions to hundreds of different companies using the same cargo ship to send or receive different amounts or types of product. They also often directly overlap with other companies’ Scope 1 and 2 emissions, leading to overcounting. The World Economic Forum recognizes this and encourages companies to address Scope 3 emissions by partnering across their value chain and putting pressure on vendors to address their own Scope 1 and 2 emissions. Despite challenges, some companies still publish a subset of Scope 3 categories, often for their largest emitting activities. As regulatory bodies push for increased disclosure, demand for reporting on Scope 3 may also increase.
So, where do CIOs and IT organizations fall in this framework? You probably already recognize that IT activities and applications can cut across all three scopes. Data centers are typically the largest contributor to IT-associated emissions. Globally, they account for 1% of electricity demand and 0.3% of all GHG emissions. Companies like Google and Meta, which own and operate large data centers, will have Scope 1 emissions associated with building cooling and operating, as well as Scope 2 emissions from purchased electricity. Companies that operate as tenants in colocation data centers will have only Scope 3 emissions tied to these services.
Energy consumed by both networking hardware and user devices, like laptops, is accounted for in building electricity captured in Scope 2 emissions. Devices also carry what is called embodied carbon — the GHG emissions produced during manufacturing and transport of hardware which fall under Scope 3. There are also Scope 3 emissions tied to the end-of-life management of these devices.
Why does it matter? For one, GHG emissions scope helps assign responsibility, particularly for Scopes 1 and 2. Beyond ownership, the scope of emissions also affects what levers are available for mitigation. Organizations have much greater control over their Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions. In data centers, improvements in cooling techniques, use of renewable energy, and introducing energy-efficient IT equipment can drive down both Scope 1 and 2 emissions. CIO device teams can reduce both Scope 2 and 3 emissions by selecting workstations that are energy-certified and have lower embodied carbon. Refurbishing, reselling, recycling, and recovering devices can also avoid Scope 3 emissions at the end of their life cycles. Finally, leveraging buying power and working with procurement teams and vendors to select sustainable shipping and other supply chain options presents a significant opportunity to reduce not only an organization’s Scope 3 emissions, but the Scope 1 and 2 emissions of vendors as well.
GHG emissions weave a tangled web, making it a challenge to account for and mitigate them, especially when management can be dispersed across organizations within a single company. In the coming posts, I’ll dive in and explore different approaches to reducing overall emissions associated with IT organizations.
Stacey Gifford, Ph.D. is CIO Sustainability Lead at IBM based in New York. This article is personal and does not necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies, or opinions.
