The Green IT Value Case – Concrete steps towards sustainable IT

From necessity to business case

Wytse Kaastra from Accenture and Marc Zegveld from TNO are both strong advocates for sustainable IT. Zegveld notes: ‘IT is already responsible for around 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions.’ Kaastra adds: ‘The IT sector’s emissions are currently higher than those of the aviation industry. If the growth of GenAI continues at this pace, the impact will only increase.’ For a long time, IT’s environmental impact was overlooked. But now there is widespread recognition that sustainable IT is essential. In fact, it presents a compelling business case for organisations across all sectors that rely on IT—from financial institutions to healthcare, and from government to transport.

The strategic benefits of sustainable IT

Organisations that invest in green IT not only achieve environmental gains but also enjoy strategic advantages. These include financial benefits such as more efficient energy use and longer hardware lifespans, as well as competitive advantages like improved market reputation, higher tender scores, and greater appeal to top talent. ‘Being green and being profitable truly go hand in hand,’ says Zegveld. ‘Moreover, if you’re a bank or insurer looking to reduce your direct CO₂ emissions, sustainable IT is one of the first places to start.’

Valuable insights from 20 organisations

Achieving sustainable IT requires collaboration and looking beyond your own organisation—to other companies in the value chain, since a large portion of the carbon footprint comes from suppliers and customers. It also means learning from the experiences and best practices of others. That’s why TNO and Accenture hosted a roundtable in January on the strategic value of sustainable IT, featuring 20 influential Dutch organisations, including ABN AMRO and Air France KLM.

Key challenges and solutions

In The Green IT Value Case, Zegveld and Kaastra link the biggest challenges in greening IT to inspiring real-world solutions. Here’s a brief overview:

Opaque emissions data – The AWS and Accenture solution & Philips case

Challenge: Measuring emissions is crucial for sustainable IT, but software system emissions data is often unavailable or unclear.

Solutions: AWS and Accenture - Use the open-source Software Carbon Intensity (SCI) standard from the Green Software Foundation to enable uniform measurement and comparison of software’s CO₂ impact on AWS cloud infrastructure.

Philips - Developed the Energy Measurement Tool (EMT), an open-source, Python-based tool that tracks energy consumption within AI and ML workloads in shared resource environments, offering granular visibility into software energy use and supporting sustainable software development.

Lack of governance structure – The ABN AMRO solution

Challenge: Many organisations struggle to integrate sustainability into IT governance, leading to confusion about roles and responsibilities and a lack of progress.

Solution: Embedding sustainable IT in governance can start small. In 2016, one ABN AMRO team conducted the first Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for IT. The unexpectedly large ecological impact led to sustainable IT becoming a strategic pillar, formalised with a Green IT team and clear KPIs.

Supply chain complexity – The Air France-KLM solution

Challenge: A large portion of IT emissions falls under scope 3—emissions across the product or service lifecycle. How can you measure and influence emissions from supply chain partners?

Solution: Collaboration across the supply chain is key. Air France-KLM moved away from traditional supplier management and established several field labs to co-develop sustainable IT solutions with partners.

Net positive technology – The Maasstad Hospital solution

Challenge: Increasing digitalisation impacts the environment but can also support the sustainability transition. How do you achieve this ‘twin transformation’ - sustainability through digitalisation, which is crucial for accelerating the energy transition – while at the same time minimising IT’s CO₂ impact?

Solution: In addition to reducing your footprint, increase your handprint—your positive contribution to the planet. Maasstad Hospital significantly reduced patient visits by enabling them to submit health data via an app. The resulting drop in car traffic had a major positive impact, which the hospital monitors to ensure it outweighs the additional IT emissions.

Time to take action

The key takeaway from the roundtable? Organisations must act now. Zegveld: ‘The business case for sustainable IT is only getting stronger.’ The paper includes a detailed roadmap of actions you can take today to benefit tomorrow. In brief:

1. Start with high-impact, quick-win measures. For example, organise a green coding hackathon or conduct LCAs on existing hardware.
2. Make sustainable IT a priority across the organisation. Encourage both top-down and bottom-up initiatives.
3. Use existing tools and resources. Such as standard measurement methods and collaboration platforms.
4. Leverage sustainable IT for strategic advantage, not just as a Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) obligation.

Zegveld and Kaastra stress the importance of collaboration and pragmatism: ‘Get started, develop your own business case, and learn from others. Once people see it works, the momentum will build.’