What is sustainable IT?
The climate crisis, in combination with current social crises across multiple regions, such as emigration and racially and ethnically driven conflicts, is humanity’s most significant challenge to overcome. As discussed in Chapter 1, Our Most Significant Challenge Ahead, we need to halve our greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 to stay in the 1.5°C-degree safe zone, and we need to peel back the consumption of Earth’s natural resources drastically. We are currently running at a pace of consuming 1.75 of Earth’s resources, which means it takes the Earth almost 1.8 months to regenerate what has been taken out. We have a finite number of resources on Earth and we must look after them.
As ESG has become a mainstream business issue, the pressure on technology leaders to assume environmental responsibility is mounting. Not only does a CEO expect a CIO to be the primary catalyst in executing business strategy in the coming 3 to 5 years (PWC 2020...
