Is sufficient carbon footprint information available to make sustainability focused computer procurement strategies meaningful?

Abstract

End user computing generates 1% of global greenhouse gas emissions therefore contributing to environmental pollution, global warming and ultimately climate change. Research indicates the carbon footprint is predominantly produced by production and use-phase electricity consumption. As such, new international legislation exists to ensure businesses include sustainability criteria when assessing and purchasing computers. Such criteria must include valid science based evidence that the selected devices, contribute to greenhouse gas abatement and net-zero emissions strategies based upon exhibiting a low life cycle carbon footprint. As such, it is reasonable to suggest that sufficient carbon footprint information must be publicly available to enable the selection process to be meaningful. The rationale being that if information is limited or misleading, then accurate identification and comparison between computers cannot be assured. Consequently, the research objective is to quantify availability of end user computing carbon footprint information, examine data uniformity and validity and propose a solution to overcome identified issues. To enable this, asset profiling of 71,990 end user computing devices located at six organisations is undertaken to generate an unbiased data pool representing popular devices used by organisations subject to the new procurement rules. Carbon footprint reports are sought for each unique model identified to examine both scope 2 use-phase emissions and scope 3 supply chain manufacturing emissions data. The findings substantiate that 22% of the 707 unique end user computer models identified have associated published information. The predominant limitation being that only six of the forty-two computer brands identified participate in product carbon footprint reporting. Additionally, methods used to form and present the carbon footprint data are incongruent for both emissions sources. Scope 3 is affected by a feasible range of emissions methodology being adopted by 50% of manufacturers compared to exact values published by the remainder. Scope 2 emissions are affected by a lack of uniformity applied to use location and device retention periods. To overcome the parity issue, a dynamic carbon footprint application is developed to harmonise available data. Consequently, it is concluded that sufficient carbon footprint information is not currently available to make sustainability focused computer procurement strategies meaningful. However, the diffusion of the proposed application and illustrated increased participation from manufacturers to publish data in the near future will enable such strategies to achieve legislative compliance and most importantly, reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with end user computer procurement and use.