Data growth across the planet is accelerating at a far higher rate than preventative sustainability measures can cope with, contributing to the already significant and growing data carbon footprints of organisations.
In a recent OECD-OPSI article, Professors Tom Jackson, Ian Hodgkinson and Lisa Jackson highlight the dangers of assuming that digitalisation and digital data is carbon neutral, as it does in fact carry a CO2 footprint. As organizations generate, process and store data, they place huge demands on energy usage to power storage facilities such as data centres.
Digital data and digital transformations are critical to driving decarbonisation solutions, and we observe a growing trend towards investing in digital solutions in pursuit of net zero. For example, in 2022 Climate Tech investments represented more than a quarter of every venture dollar invested, according to PWC.
However, there is another side to the relationship between digital and decarbonization, which is the impact digital data and bad digital practices can have on the planet.