American suppliers are not exempt from decarbonization

CIOs play a key role in reporting to businesses and reducing greenhouse gas emissions – and this goes beyond moving to an energy-efficient cloud or shutting down the most recent desktop PCs. This is news from recent customer events hosted by software and IT service providers including SAP, Salesforce and Google. The latter has made sustainable growth the main theme of its Google Cloud next 21 event (October 12-14). More and more companies – their customers and, in some cases, governments – are expected to report their greenhouse gas emissions, usually by following measurement methods.

“Considering the growing demand for CSR reporting [environnementaux, sociaux et de gouvernance]Companies are looking for ways to show their employees, boards and customers about the progress of climate goals, ”agrees Jen Bennett, technical director of data and technology strategy for sustainable development in Google’s director of technology.

Expand the scope

Companies directly control some greenhouse gas emissions: these are called “scope 1” emissions from own or controlled sources. Companies have been monitoring this data in their ERP systems for more than a decade. Objective 2 Emissions from the purchase of electricity, heat and steam are relatively easy to calculate because energy companies typically report an average emissions per kilowatt-hour (kWh) produced. These emissions may even appear as a line in your office or data center utility bill.

Expanding reporting capabilities to include Scope 3 emissions is a challenge for many – goods and services purchased goods, goods sold, transportation and distribution, waste disposal, travel staff and everything else including business travel (An idea raised in France but quickly rejected). Some companies have taken up the challenge of reporting comprehensive emissions data. To do this, you need to get a lot of data from suppliers and be able to relate it to the products and services you have purchased. Specialized software tools in stability reporting, or modules in ERP systems that can do that, are the most realistic idea of ​​accurately reporting emissions, and the “why” of the report is still the board or board of directors, the “how” and “when” are questions that need to be answered by the CIO.

Reporting total emissions has obvious advantages

Although Microsoft recently made its “emissions impact dashboard” available to its customers, Google has added a carbon footprint report to its cloud platform management console, allowing customers to track their total carbon emissions by project, product or area. , Says Jen Bennett of Google. It provides tools to help customers move workloads to areas with low carbon data centers, which is just as important as complying with data protection laws. By reporting its total carbon emissions on the console, Google exhibits excellent transparency and emphasizes the importance of elegant, real-time data to ensure that emission reports are effective.

Google has been carbon-neutral since 2007, meaning its data centers still use carbon-emitting electricity, but the company buys carbon offsets. Since 2017, it has been “100% renewable”, meaning it purchases enough renewable energy to meet its annual power consumption. However, if the sun does not shine and the wind does not blow, whenever she needs electricity, the electricity she actually uses can come from coal-fired power stations. That’s why, according to Zen Bennett, Google is working to fully decorbonize its 24/7 cloud operations by 2030, with clean energy for every platform that operates.

Through its cloud console, Google provides its customers with the quality of the status they need to get there, and makes it easy to import that information into their own reporting systems. “To help our customers calculate emissions beyond our cloud and across their company, we have integrated our Google Cloud emissions data into their accounting platform and partnered with Salesforce Sustainability Cloud,” he explains. Google has another consistency message: it opens its Google Earth engine satellite database to GCP users and allows it to analyze satellite images in conjunction with other data sources, such as water availability or weather hazards, using its AI and BigQuery tools.

Other stability reporting software

Salesforce announced a month ago that in support of sustainable growth, Dreamforce would use “100% renewable” electricity (on average year-round) by 2021 and reach net zero emissions at its full value. Chain (including scope 3). The company has achieved this through its own sustainability cloud software, which has reduced the time it takes to complete annual reports from six months to six weeks. At the event, Salesforce released the second edition of its program, adding new Slack-based tools for collecting Scope 3 emission data from suppliers, additional forecasting and scheduling tools. To create an online exchange for carbon credits by announcing views on managing the effects of climate change on businesses and its purpose.

SAP is a focal point for collecting and processing data on greenhouse gas emissions. By upgrading tools such as its Arifa supply network, it will be able to exchange information on carbon pricing, as well as dollar prices, products and services, and the ERP system used by its customers. Who and when do they spend to calculate greenhouse gas emissions? Last year, SAP announced product carbon footprint analyzes, which provide insight into the impact of specific products. Product track management was launched in September 2021 to provide additional management tools and process integration.