Introduction

The environmental footprint of the IT industry cannot be ignored any more. It consumes about 10% of the world’s electricity and about 4% of its primary energy and generates about 4% of the greenhouse gas emissions due to human beings (Source: The Shift Project, 2021 and 2023b). It has also many other social and environmental impacts, such as the depletion of abiotic resources (especially mineral resources), the acidification of soil and different types of ecotoxicities, that do not respect planetary boundaries.

For a digital organisation or for the IT department of an organisation from another field of activities, a large part of its environmental footprint is due to the manufacturing of its IT equipment (computers, smartphones, servers, routers, etc.) and more specifically to the extraction (mining) of raw material required for the manufacture of equipment.

Many large companies have committed themselves to reducing their societal and environmental footprint, and especially their greenhouse gas emissions in line with the Paris Agreement. It means that they commit themselves to reducing their emissions drastically, by 5 to 6 percent each year until 2050. This reduction covers not only emissions from energy consumption (Scopes 1 and 2 of the GHG Protocol) but also emissions from the value chain (Scope 3). Scope 3 emissions can represent 80% of the global footprint of a digital company or of its IT department. Consequently, to reduce this footprint it has to engage and influence its stakeholders.

This referential also considers the social dimension, in the form of the three Pillars of Sustainability as defined by the United Nations: People, Planet, Prosperity. This is in line with the two levels of labelling proposed by the Institute for Sustainable IT (ISIT). The ethical dimension is considered more and more, especially with the development of Artificial Intelligence.

Many companies use labels - such as Ecovadis - to score the sustainability level of their suppliers. Unfortunately, this label does not include any specific requirement relative to the IT industry and its impacts. The objective of this document is to propose a new questionnaire specific to Sustainable IT, and not sustainability in general, that enables the evaluation of the maturity of suppliers and other stakeholders.

A systemic issue, such as the footprint of IT, requires a specific systemic approach.

This document is the result of 15 meetings of 2 hours, with different specialists and experts in Sustainable IT. Collective work started in January 2024 and ended in December 2024.