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title: Digital sustainability for communicators

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# Digital sustainability for communicators
The following is a list of material designed to support those wishing to influence others in the change process. No matter what your day job or official role is, the ability to communicate effectively is vital. Working through the essential material will build your confidence as a Practitioner. Completing the optional material will put you on the path towards Expert level. 

## Essentials

## Groups to join
There are many groups which are worth joining within the government and public sector which can increase your knowledge and expand your network. 

- [ ] **Civil Service Environment Network (CSEN)**. General-purpose group which publishes articles and organises occasional events. You must be a civil servant to join.  https://www.civilserviceenvironmentnetwork.org/
- [ ]  **Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment (IEMA**). A global professional body which has good representation in the UK public sector. Your department should be able to fund your membership. https://www.iema.net/
- [ ] **GOV News**. cross-government informal community space for the UK public sector. https://community.gov.news
- [ ] **X-GOV Slack**. Digital space for civil servants to share and collaborate across government. There are several channels devoted to sustainability/ https://ukgovernmentdigital.slack.coom
- [ ] **Cross-public sector climate work show and tell**. On the first Thursday of every month at 4 pm an online show and tell features a mix of public servants and speakers from external organisations sharing their climate work thoughts, struggles, wins, and learnings. If you have a UK government email address, you can join the mailing list here: https://bit.ly/govclimateinfo

## Activities 

- [ ] **Use Ecosia - the search engine that plants trees**. Ecosia uses the ad revenue from your searches to restore and protect biodiversity hotspots. Instead of monocultures, Ecosia grows over 500 different native species. For example, in Indonesia Ecosia works with indigenous communities to protect the critically endangered Sumatran orangutan by turning palm oil plantations into diverse forests. https://www.ecosia.org/?c=en
- [ ] **Community 10,000**. DWP-supported volunteering initiative. If you are not in DWP, then ask, your department or employer may offer something similar. Volunteering on nature-based activities is a great way to reconnect and engage with other like-minded people. https://dwpdigital.blog.gov.uk/2020/03/13/digging-wheelbarrows-and-picks-dwp-digital-volunteers-in-the-community/

- [ ] **Climtate Fresk**. Climate Fresk originated in France, but is now a global phenomenon. It's a low-cost 3-hour workshop (in person or virtual) in which attendees collaborate to understand the interconnection of human activity and climate change. The word 'fresk' is short for 'fresco', as the workshop uses a visual collage to bring together the ideas. Find one local to you at https://climatefresk.org/world/

- [ ] **Digital Collage**. Similar to the Climate Fresk, but looking at the impact of digital activity. https://digitalcollage.org/index.html


- [ ] **Carbon Literacy**. According to their website, 'Learners who have completed a day’s worth of Carbon Literacy learning can be certified as ‘Carbon Literate’' There are options for both individuals and organisations. https://carbonliteracy.com/individual/courses/


- [ ] **NASA Global Climate Change Interactives**. These interactive activites include Quizzes (e.g. on carbon, climate, and the ocean) and a 'Climate Time Machine' which provides a series of visualizations which show how some of Earth's key climate indicators are changing over time. https://climate.nasa.gov/explore/interactives/

### Videos

- [ ] **Clouded II: Does Cloud Cost the Earth?** - https://www.clouded.tv/ (trailer at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPLMyY71_eM)

- [ ]  **What does it all mean: Net-zero, carbon neutral, climate positive, carbon negative? by Asim Hussain** Good breakdown of some of the crucial terminology, focussed speficically on digital emissions. 20 minutes, broken into clear chapters. 
https://youtu.be/HXEnbi64TdQ?si=Ff4eGg2uo4OUxsQm 



### Digital footprint tools

https://impactco2.fr/usagenumerique/ 

https://myimpact.isit-europe.org/


### Books
- [ ] **How to Talk About Climate Change in a Way That Makes a Difference** https://www.amazon.co.uk/About-Climate-Change-Makes-Difference/dp/1911632760 or https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/How-to-Talk-About-Climate-Change-Audiobook/100403055X 


- [ ] **How Bad Are Bananas?**

- [ ] **It's Not the End of the World**

- [ ] **It's Not Just You** https://www.amazon.co.uk/Its-Not-Just-Tori-Tsui-ebook/dp/B099SGJ6F6

### Articles to read
There are hundreds of recent articles on these topics, here is a sampling of a few which are of interest.

#### Greenwashing 

https://www.mightybytes.com/blog/digital-greenwashing-guide/ 


https://mit-serc.pubpub.org/pub/the-cloud-is-material/release/2

https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-staggering-ecological-impacts-of-computation-and-the-cloud/

#### General interest
* **The Staggering Ecological Impacts of Computation and the Cloud** - https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-staggering-ecological-impacts-of-computation-and-the-cloud/
* **The UK government's IT carbon footprint has got worse - the transparency is welcome** - https://www.csofutures.com/news/the-uk-governments-it-carbon-footprint-has-got-worse-and-thats-not-all-bad-news/
* **How can engineers make IT more sustainable? Part 1: It’s holistic** - https://www.scaleway.com/en/blog/how-can-engineers-make-it-more-sustainable-part-1/ 
* **Sustainability, a surprisingly successful KPI: GreenOps survey results** - https://climateaction.tech/blog/sustainability-kpi-greenops-survey-results/
* **The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Reports** - https://www.ipcc.ch/reports/

#### Data centres 
* **Amazon, Google, Microsoft: Here's Who Has the Greenest Cloud** - https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-google-microsoft-green-clouds-and-hyperscale-data-centers/
* **Why Cloud Zombies Are Destroying the Planet and How You Can Stop Them** - https://www.infoq.com/news/2023/03/stop-cloud-zombies-qcon/
* **Understanding the results of cloud providers' carbon calculators** - https://boavizta.org/en/blog/calculettes-carbone-clouds-providers


#### Hardware and e-waste 
* **Your old phone is full of precious metals** - https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20161017-your-old-phone-is-full-of-precious-metals
* **UN report: Time to seize opportunity, tackle challenge of e-waste** - https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/un-report-time-seize-opportunity-tackle-challenge-e-waste


https://www.thegreenwebfoundation.org/news/data-sources-for-calculating-digital-emissions/

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2022/07/22/do-men-and-women-think-about-climate-change-differently

https://www.ucem.ac.uk/whats-happening/articles/greenwashing/ 

### Podcasts
#### Technology 
- [ ]   **Environment variables:** weekly podcast by the Green Web Foundation. Often technical, covers a wide range of topics. Recommended. https://podcast.greensoftware.foundation
- [ ]   **Green IO:** weekly podcast hosted by Gaël Duez on green software and ICT. Recommended. https://greenio.gaelduez.com/ 

### Climate change
- [ ] **Outrage + Optimism**. Not a tech podcast, but worth listening to as a leading climate change resource.
https://www.outrageandoptimism.org/

* **Civil Service Climate + Environment Network**. Not a tech podcast either. But relevant to civil servants. 
https://www.civilserviceenvironmentnetwork.org/environment-deep-dive

* **The Anti-Dread Climate Podcast**. US-based podcast with short, punchy episodes which help answer a myriad of sustainability questions. 
https://www.kcrw.com/culture/shows/the-anti-dread-climate-podcast

### People to follow
The following individuals are worth following on LinkedIn for their outstanding contributions to digital sustainability and climate science:

Digital sustainability:
* Gael Duez
* Tom Frick
* Gerry M (N.B. Add surname.)

Climate science:
* Professor Ed Hawkins MBE 

## Glossary
Make sure you are familiar with the following concepts and terminology.

**Climate change**: Climate change is the long-term shift in average weather patterns across the world. In the 11,000 years before the Industrial Revolution, the average temperature across the world was stable at around 14°C. The Industrial Revolution began in the mid-1800s when humans began to burn fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and gas for fuel. This causes global temperatures to rise, resulting in long-term changes to the climate. For a more in depth explanation and visual graphs please see: https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/climate-change/what-is-climate-change#:~:text=Climate%20change%20refers%20to%20a,greenhouse%20gases%20into%20the%20air.

**Carbon forecasting and timeshifting**: in countries such as the UK with a distinctly mixed energy grid, the emissions generated by using electricity can vary dramatically throughout the day or week, based on environmental and market conditions. A bright and windy day will typically mean that emissions can be very low, while a dull and windless day will mean that the same kWh produce far higher amounts of CO2. Carbon forecasting uses the predicted weather to look for ‘green windows’ of time. The https://github.com/bbc/carbon-minimiser is a good way to get started with this in the UK, and the Green Software Foundation has also produced the https://github.com/Green-Software-Foundation/carbon-aware-sdk which works at country level. 

**Carbon intensity**: the carbon cost or producing electricity, based on the local energy mix. In the UK, this is typically a mixture of gas, nuclear, wind and solar. In western Europe, countries with high intensities (over 400g per kWh) include Poland, Czechia and Germany, all of which rely on coal for much of all of their power generation. Countries with very low carbon intensity include Iceland, Norway and Sweden, which use energy sources such as hydro, geothermal or nuclear. See https://app.electricitymaps.com/map for an interactive map/tool for a global view and https://www.carbonintensity.org.uk/ for a UK regional view. Both services have very useful APIs to support activities such as demand shifting.

**Circular economy:** an economic model which moves away from our current 'take-make-waste' model towards one which works towards keeping materials and products in the system for as long as possible. Examples of circular economic models in ICT include practices such as repairing, refurbishing or remanufacturing devices rather than purchasing new and then disposing and/or recycling the waste. 

**Demand shifting**: in Green Software development and GreenOps, there is the opportunity to locate servers or activities in regions where the carbon intensity is lower. This could mean moving some or all of your activity in a country or region with a cleaner grid, such as Sweden or Scotland. It could also mean using carbon forecasting (for example using https://github.com/bbc/carbon-minimiser) to schedule some activities when your local grid is greener. 

**Embodied carbon**: the carbon emitted when creating a physical object. For the purposes of this exercise, we look closely at the carbon that is emitted when creating a device such as a smartphone, monitor, laptop or server. For consumer devices, the embodied carbon makes up the vast majority of the overall emissions, as much as 80% in most cases. For servers, the usage can make up a far bigger percentage of the emissions, but this depends on how the server is utilised. As embodied carbon is such an important number, this is why devices must be kept in operation for as long as possible. Getting a new phone every year or a new laptop every three years is not acceptable. See https://dataviz.boavizta.org/ and https://github.com/rarecoil/laptop-co2e for detailed breakdowns of different device types and manufacturer data. Understanding embodied carbon is critical for measuring your Scope 3 Emissions. 

**Energy scopes**: the internationally recognised Greenhouse Gas Protocol uses the term ‘emission scopes’ to be used for reporting purposes. Broadly speaking, Scope 1 includes the burning of fossil fuels within an organisation’s operations. This would include operating a vehicle fleet or heating a building with gas-powered radiators. Scope 2 is the direct use of purchased electricity within an organisation’s operations. For a typical government department, this would include lighting, air conditioning and the power to run laptops and printers. Scopes 1 and 2 are generally easy to measure, just check your utility bills. Scope 3, on the other hand, is much, much bigger and more complex. For most organisations, Scope 3 makes up about 80% of emissions. In the broad definition, Scope 3 includes all the other activities needed to run a business or organisations, such as employee commuting, cloud hosting, purchased goods and the like. Scope 3 emissions fall into 15 subcategories, which can be found at: https://www.compareyourfootprint.com/difference-scope-1-2-3-emissions/. Government departments are obliged to report on Scope 3 emissions to Defra quarterly in the STAR report. The reporting of Scope 3 has become mandatory in the EU (see https://www.thomsonreuters.com/en-us/posts/esg/csrd-esg-regulations/) and was recently passed into law in California (see https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/oct/09/california-carbon-emissions-law). It would seem likely that similar legislation will follow in the UK. 

**ESG reporting**: Environmental, social and corporate governance. Our home planet is not in a healthy state. ESG reporting includes all legislation aimed at holding governments, institutions and corporations to account with regards to environmental and social issues. This now includes a wide array of things, such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, Net Zero targets, Greening of Government Commitment, the Social Value Model and recent Corporate sustainability reporting legislation passed by the EU. DWP is committed to Net Zero by 2050 at the latest, and for all government departments and ALBs, the Defra STAR report is the primary ESG reporting mechanism. 

**GHG**: Green House Gas. CO2 is obviously the most well-known, but other GHGs include methane, nitrous oxide and sulphur dioxide, to name just a few. To make things easier, the abbreviation CO2e is often used, which stands for CO2 equivalent, where the warming potential of the various GHGs can be compared in a way which all can agree upon. 

**GreenOps**: building on the job titles ‘DevOps’ and ‘FinOps’, ‘GreenOps’ is the role within a software team that looks at optimising the deployment and running of software (typically in the cloud) based on GreenSoftware principles. GreenOps is well aligned to FinOps, in that both typically look at reducing cloud usage, but GreenOps takes this one step further by including carbon as a cost.

**Location vs. market-based reporting**: carbon intensity can be reported on in two ways. With location-based reporting, the emissions are calculated by using the carbon intensity for the local or national grid. In this way, emissions can be calculated quite accurately. Market-based reporting allows companies to buy renewable energy certificates, for example from countries such as Norway. In essence, this is a form of offsetting, and the accuracy of this approach is a topic of debate. The Sustain.Life website recently published an article on this: https://www.sustain.life/blog/purchased-electricity-emissions-accounting-market-and-location-based. Most cloud providers use market-based calculations, which is why they can claim to be powered on ‘100% green energy’. The UK Government and Defra’s STAR report use a location-based approach, as the reliability and accuracy of market-based approaches can be difficult to verify. See https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/greenhouse-gas-reporting-conversion-factors-2023 for the conversion factors used by GOV.UK. The SCI also uses location-based reporting for their calculations. 

**Net Zero**: the internationally agreed and legally binding term used to describe how organisations and countries will reduce their emissions by 2050 in order to keep as close to the 1.5C of global warming, the agreed ‘safe’ limit to sustain human and much of plant and animal life. For many organisations, this must mean producing zero or near zero emissions. See https://netzeroclimate.org/what-is-net-zero-2/ and https://energysavingtrust.org.uk/what-is-net-zero-and-how-can-we-get-there/ for further information. 

**Offsetting, carbon-neutral**: although popular up until recently, these terms have fallen out of favour due to their vulnerability to ‘greenwashing’. Recent EU legislation has in fact banned the use of terms such as ‘carbon neutral’ (see https://carbonmarketwatch.org/2023/09/20/carbon-market-watch-welcomes-eu-ban-on-carbon-neutrality-greenwashing/). Instead, organisations must explain how they will reach Net Zero. For certain hard-to-decarbonise industries such as the manufacture of steel and cement, offsetting can be used as a last resort. 

**Rebound effect / Jevons' Paradox**: the tendency for gains in efficiency to be outpaced by increases in demand. This can be observed in areas such as transport, where widening roads typically increases traffic, or in digital where, improving efficiency only increases demand, quickly cancelling out the efficiency gains. Sufficiency can be seen as a strong counterpoint to efficiency. Also see Wirth’s Law. 

**Social Value Model**: this act was passed into UK legislation in 2020, and is composed of 5 themes which should be taken into account when awarding government contracts. Theme 3, Fighting climate change: Effective stewardship of the environment, is now 10% of the decision-making process when awarding large ICT contracts. 

**Software Carbon Intensity specification (SCI)**: a new ISO standard for measuring the environmental impact of software produced by the Green Software Foundation. The SCI uses location-based reporting combined with embodied carbon to calculate the impact of a piece of software. See https://github.com/Green-Software-Foundation/sci/blob/main/Software_Carbon_Intensity/Software_Carbon_Intensity_Specification.md for details. 

**UN SDGs**: the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. These are the 17 internationally agreed goals which were adopted globally in 2017. They include many goals related to sustainability, and are often referred to within ESG reports. 

**Wirth’s Law**: we are all probably familiar with Moore’s Law on computer performance. Wirth’s Law observes that software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware is becoming faster. It’s a good argument for sufficiency.