Map and measure your technology carbon emissions and take pragmatic mitigation steps that align your organisation's technology strategy with its sustainability strategy.
Sustainability goals are intrinsic to modern organisations and yet there is a general lack of understanding of how to make software truly sustainable. Software has real-world impacts and risks that need to be considered and mitigated.
Before you can take action, you need to baseline your current emissions across your technology estate – but this is not straightforward. Sometimes, sustainability considerations may be at odds with the general thrust of your technology strategy; for example, on-premises may in some cases be preferable to cloud in terms of carbon emissions. It’s a complex landscape to navigate, but we can help.
At Scott Logic, we understand that truly sustainable software is financially, ethically, operationally and environmentally sustainable. We advise on and implement sustainable solutions across a series of sustainability themes.
We go beyond just green and carbon considerations to design and build software that balances the many trade-offs – including impacts to ongoing software costs, impacts to users, and security and risk considerations – while aligning sustainability with organisational quality goals.
We help you understand and measure the holistic sustainability trade-offs in enterprise software and data platforms. We then guide you to take pragmatic steps to reduce the impact of software projects on people and the natural environment.
While climate action is important, there is a danger in over-indexing on carbon emission calculation rather than looking at pragmatic steps that provide balanced sustainable outcomes including, but not limited to, CO₂e emissions reduction. Our holistic view is summarised below:
Find out more about our client and internal sustainable software projects.
A trailblazer in environmental sustainability, DS Smith sought Scott Logic’s support to develop a pragmatic framework that would allow the company to be self-sufficient in mapping, measuring and mitigating its technology carbon emissions.
As part of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts' Code for Earth programme, Scott Logic won the opportunity to create vAirify—a tool to evaluate Air Quality Index forecasts globally.
While our approach is always tailored to your needs, we have a range of tried-and-tested solutions that speed up delivery and drive a successful outcome.
We understand the complexities of navigating the technology landscape from a sustainability point of view. That’s why we created the Technology Carbon Standard. It’s a method of classifying and mapping an organisation’s technology estate. Once your technology is categorised, mapping and measuring your carbon emissions becomes much easier and the mitigation opportunities become more apparent.
The Technology Carbon Estimator is designed to give a high-level overview of the possible areas of carbon impact within your IT estate. The estimations are framed within our proposed model of tech emissions – the Technology Carbon Standard. This tool is provided free of charge to assist you in identifying and measuring your carbon footprint, for information and guidance only.
We help you create an actionable strategy for green software, one that creates a practical alignment between your organisation’s sustainability goals and your technology transformation efforts. And you can trust that the impartial advice we provide on your architectural choices will be independent of vendor greenwashing.
We assess if, how, and when migrating to the cloud is more sustainable than on-premises. To do this, we consider electricity CO₂ intensity and your existing investments in infrastructure, skills and supportability. We review existing cloud deployment against the sustainability elements of well-architected frameworks and industry patterns catalogues, and advise on pragmatic, cloud-native approaches that enable the full benefits of the flexible cloud operating model.
We review existing on-premises investments and legacy platforms to understand if, when, and how these should be modernised for business productivity and sustainability improvements. We assess the availability of skills, support and security, and the lifecycle of the infrastructure (alongside its environmental footprint), to determine the options for modernisation – and we can support you with the implementation of these transformations.
For many years, hardware has often been thrown at problems because compute was viewed as cheap. Turns out it isn’t so cheap after all, when you consider the environmental (and long-term financial) costs. We help your teams develop sustainable development practices through which they can manage technical debt and refactor legacy code for greater efficiency, greater maintainability and reduced operational costs.
Not all claims of “green” technology are accurate or substantiated. This blog introduces approaches that can help you cut through the noise and make informed decisions about your organisation’s technology sustainability.
Oliver Cronk
Introducing our Technology Carbon Estimator, a user-friendly tool that helps understand your organisation's tech-related carbon impacts. Matthew Griffin explains how it was built, how it works, and how it can help guide users in their sustainability journeys.
Matt Griffin
This year Scott Logic collaborated with DWP Digital for the Green Software Foundation’s 2024 Carbon Hack. Read about the challenges, processes and contributions of their Object Storage Carbon estimates project.
Matt Griffin
For the green and carbon considerations, we align our approach with open source and science-backed, cross-industry frameworks such as the GHG Protocol and Green Software Foundation.
We don’t just accept the numbers that vendors generate, we take a pragmatic approach to calculating and validating the impacts of software.
Where possible, this includes the embodied carbon footprint (impacts associated with the creation of systems) as well as the energy consumption from running systems.
We apply those same international standards to Scott Logic in pursuit of our aim to be a more sustainable business. They underpin our ambitious net zero targets. And the same ethos lies behind both the annual, independent assessment of our sustainability, and our commitment as a B Corp to be part of a global movement helping to shape an inclusive, equitable, and regenerative economy.
Want to know more about how we could support your organisation's sustainable software ambitions?
Drop us a line to find out how our approach could help.
