How tech can transition beyond greenwashing?

How tech can transition beyond greenwashing We have reached a turning point in corporate responsibility.

Global businesses are coming out and claiming that environmental, social and governance ESG initiatives are of immense importance to their future strategies.

ESG efforts have gone far beyond “nice to have,” entering firmly into the realm of “must have.”

As extreme climate events take place with alarming regularity, calls for improved sustainability initiatives within business strategies will continue to grow louder.

Companies are being forced to pursue more accurate and public accounting for their carbon emissions and to take demonstrable steps toward using more sustainable energy sources.

However, these positive developments come with a troubling caveat. A recent Google Cloud report found that 58% of executives anonymously surveyed felt that their companies were guilty of “greenwashing,” a term used against organizations that claim to be more environmentally friendly than they are.

Greenwashing is particularly rampant in the tech industry.

As the world continues to embrace all things digital, the companies that produce digital technology struggle to meet growing demand, often with only a glancing thought about the environmental impact of their supply chains.

Many of these companies talk a great game when it comes to their sustainability efforts.

But exactly how much can we trust technology companies to really be making their processes greener?

Technology companies’ environmental effects can be deceptive. On the one hand, technology manufacturers have an environmental impact like that of many other manufacturers. But for the longest time, people thought that an online company like Twitter, say, or eBay would have less of an impact on the environment because so much of their business is conducted online.

We know now that it is much more complicated and that even an entirely virtual company is going to have a significant carbon footprint from sources like computer servers and, for ecommerce companies, delivery vehicles.

In fact, the technology sector is only becoming more carbon-intensive, despite widespread “green” claims.

The tech industry is responsible for a substantial amount of the world’s total global carbon emissions That is more than the emissions from air transportation, although the impact of airplanes is getting a lot more attention than tech these days.

The problem with tech’s emissions is highlighted in the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which found that, while digitalization can certainly enable a certain degree of emissions reductions, the process can also have “adverse side-effects unless appropriately governed.”

Particularly worrisome is tech’s contribution to greenhouse gas emissions GHG, which are growing at an unprecedented pace relative to tech’s GDP weight. This is where some of the biggest tech companies need to be held accountable.

For example, as the tech industry continues to pursue innovation and ever more powerful devices for such services as data streaming, the production of new devices now accounts for more than half of IT’s overall global emissions.

In fact, when you use an electricity grid, it is impossible to distinguish between socalled “green” energies wind or solar and those that are decidedly less so coal or gas.

The first step in addressing the carbon-emission crisis for tech is for companies to commit to carbon accounting. This could start with a simple carbon assessment and eventually progress to a systematic process of evaluating, recording and publicly reporting the company’s carbon emissions.

A full carbon-accounting process encompasses three different areas, or “scopes.”

Scope refers to direct emissions from sources that the company owns or controls.

Scope covers indirect emissions from the electricity, heating, cooling, and other services that the company purchases. Scope includes all the indirect emissions that come from a company’s full supply chain.

Because Scope emissions are also the most general category, they are often the most difficult to measure. And yet they might in fact make up the largest share of the company’s overall carbon emissions.

Once a tech company has calculated its full carbon impact, it must seek ways to reduce that impact. Only then can it move towards a more sustainable business As we know, a lot of what companies tout as sustainable practice is just so much marketing blather. And “net zero,” at least as it is currently practiced, is sadly a misnomer. According to a report by the Corporate Climate Responsibility Monitor, the “net zero” targets of major companies resulted in minimal overall reduction in emissions from those companies.

Relying on companies to regulate themselves is not the answer. There is a real need for increased regulation, not only to eliminate the greenwashing but to progress much more quickly toward the real end goal: preventing environmental catastrophe.

It is time for government and businesses to work together to create practical and measurable metrics for companies to incorporate into their regular reporting processes.

Companies need to account for carbon in the same way that they account for every penny that passes through their businesses.

And then these numbers need to become public to keep these companies accountable.

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