Tech is often in the corner where the blows fall, while it is a sector that is absolutely a force for good when it comes to sustainability, Menno van Leeuwen sees.
In the past decade, tech was mainly mentioned as a solution for sustainability issues. Nowadays you read more and more reports about tech as a driver of sustainability issues. Despite the fact that data centers have become more sustainable in terms of infrastructure, generate or purchase their energy green, the exceptional increase in gen AI raises major questions about whether this can be justified sustainably. Think of unnecessary material and energy consumption, grid congestion and water scarcity.
No news for the importer and certainly to be nuanced, but for the public it is still unknown that data use has a negative footprint. At the moment, data use already accounts for 3% of all energy use and it is expected that this could reach a share of up to 30 percent.
Will Microsoft end up in the same image corner as Shell?
And how does that affect other companies in this chain? Who is actually responsible? I would not wait for the moment and as a company in this value chain show leadership by being transparent and saving where possible. There are still regulations for that. You have probably heard of CSRD, but what exactly is it and how does it affect the data and energy issue?
CSRD as a force for good?
CSRD (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive) the obligation for sustainability reporting for (medium) large companies with ultimately the same status as the annual financial report. In the Netherlands, around 4,500 companies will have to report on the most important environmental and social topics that apply to them and their stakeholders.
A long list of topics has been provided in the so-called European Sustainability Reporting Standards. These include topics such as energy, water use and circularity. If these topics are scored as high according to the prescribed (double materiality) process, reporting must be done according to certain data requirements.
If climate change is ‘material’ for your company and in particular energy and you are in a ‘high climate impact sector’ (including data centers), then that will require quite extensive reporting on emissions, energy consumption with targets and transition plans. This will reveal the negative data usage effects such as CO2 emissions scope 1,2,3, water use and consumption of materials via all kinds of company reports.
Companies that make progress by, for example, limiting unnecessary energy loss can substantiate this in their annual report. Assume that this information is increasingly being taken into account by stakeholders, such as purchasers, financiers and environmental services.
I can’t wait until those annual reports are public to dig into which company is doing well and which is doing badly. There is a good chance that I will have those analyses carried out using an AI tool. So ultimately tech as force for good 🙂
Gen AI unleashes hyper demand for data centres technology
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