The Scott Logic sustainability team has recently added new content to the open-source Technology Carbon Standard website. The proposed standard aims to provide a consistent approach for classifying and analysing the carbon impact of an organisation’s technology footprint. You can read more about its release in our blog post: Announcing the (proposed) Technology Carbon Standard.
Following the previous update, the latest additions focus on understanding and estimating the carbon impact of technology hardware throughout its entire life cycle. This encompasses both embodied carbon (including upstream emissions from manufacturing, transportation, and end-of-life processes) and usage carbon (spanning operational emissions arising from direct utilisation of an organisation’s hardware, as well as downstream emissions from end-users of the organisation’s products).
Key updates include:
- Navigation has been restructured with “Impact Categories” (Upstream, Operational, Downstream) serving as landing pages linking to dedicated “Information” pages like “Hardware Life Cycle Emissions” and “Cloud Services”. Previously published content has been relocated into these new information pages.
- A new “Hardware Life Cycle Emissions” section explores embodied versus usage carbon emissions for various devices like laptops, desktops, monitors, and servers. It covers manufacturer-provided life cycle emissions data, including Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) and Product Carbon Footprint (PCF) reports.
- The content outlines high-level approaches for estimating embodied and usage emissions when granular PCF data is unavailable, leveraging assumptions around device power draw, usage duration, carbon intensities, and industry-wide embodied/usage ratios.
- Guidance is provided on leveraging manufacturer Product Carbon Footprint (PCF) data to derive embodied and usage carbon estimates, accounting for variations in usage patterns.
- Worked examples demonstrate these different estimation approaches for a laptop and server.
- The glossary has been expanded with hardware emissions terminology including embodied carbon, usage carbon, Product Carbon Footprint (PCF), Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), and Typical Energy Consumption (TEC).
The goal of the Technology Carbon Standard is to provide the information technology sector with the knowledge needed to reduce their climate impact. As an open-source project, contributions and improvements are welcomed from the community.
The team has their sights set on upcoming additions, including guidance around upstream and direct operational emissions from networking equipment, as well as tackling the complex realm of indirect operational emissions tied to SaaS platforms and managed service providers.
By increasing awareness and transparency around the carbon emissions of technology, the Technology Carbon Standard aims to accelerate the IT industry’s transition to net zero.
Check out the website to learn more at http://www.techcarbonstandard.org.
Get involved via the GitHub repo at https://github.com/ScottLogic/Technology-Carbon-Standard.
