IT Essentials: Summer's coming
But cloud casts a shadow
With the sun shining, it's the perfect time to review ESG reports. No, really. We've made it easy.
The sun is shining, the bees are buzzing and tech news is thin on the ground. Summer is just around the corner.
July and August are traditionally known as silly season in the press - a time when actual news is so rare that PRs (and some unscrupulous journalists) can put out any old rubbish and have it published.
Silly season is casting a long shadow back to April this year - we got all the way to Thursday last week without a cyberattack (unusual but welcome), and I received a press release about AI predicting the next 50 years of royal headlines (stupid).
I blame climate change. Humans, unlike polar bears, are adaptable creatures, and the seasonal media has evolved to fit our longer, hotter summers and warmer, wetter winters.
I don't know about you, but I'd quite like to go back to two months of sun, nine months of rain and a blink-and-you'll-miss-it autumn, if it means the silliness is confined to the summer months.
How do we get there? A great first step - for both the planet and my inbox - is to look at your cloud providers' green credentials.
Cloud datacentres account for almost 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions, so your cloud use is likely to represent a hefty percentage of your scope 3 (indirect) emissions. Scope 3 reporting is currently voluntary, but will probably become mandatory in the near future.
How handy, then, that we've just released an in-depth report into the big three cloud companies' green activities (click here to jump straight to the TLDR), looking at everything from how they handle waste to their stated and actual climate commitments.
Unlike most climate reporting, it's not all doom and gloom. All three companies have upped their game this year, with one taking such a big leap forward that they overtook the never-before-displaced leader.
This year, cloud providers have dialled down the greenwash and are putting their money where their mouths are in terms of following through on (most) commitments. Even though there's still plenty to do, it's a great start and bodes well for end users.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a date with a deckchair and a knotted handkerchief.
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Sticking with a theme, I spoke to Heathrow CIO Sharon Prior about the airport's work to make aviation more sustainable. You'll be unsurprised to know that much of this year's work relies on AI to find new efficiencies.
CERN, of Large Hadron Collider fame, is also working on efficiency: a forced move as it deals with the same GPU shortages as the rest of us. You'd think such an important facility could pull rank and jump the queue, but no - it has to wait in line like everybody else.
We'll be digging into the GPU shortage later this week in an interview with IP lawyer and semiconductor specialist Adrian Toutoungi, focusing on the UK's National Semiconductor Strategy and why building "tradeable strength" is little more than a sticking plaster. Watch this space!
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