Efficient energy usage makes sustainability possible–but how do we address this need now for the future? For some time, renewable energy sources, such as biomass, wind and solar power have brought us closer to addressing our growing energy demand and carbon output. But with the digitization of many industries and the rise in data-driven business models, few are aware of the immense impact that technology and data processing have on our energy usage. This growth is unsustainable. As technology leaders, we share a responsibility to understand and address our data carbon footprint. Ingraining sustainability into our practice and measuring our collective impact now is crucial to avoid the risk of future problems that can cause even greater harm.
There is a significant energy cost associated with data, exacerbated by its exponentially growing demand and the vast amount of processing, storage, and replication happening across industries. Although storage costs per unit of data continue to come down, there are still unsustainable physical, economic, and energy costs. The carbon footprint of information and communications technology is currently measured to be 2% of global emissions, and expected to grow to 8% by 2030. With firms spending approximately 80% of their data resources in repetitive data processing, storage and management work, and only 20% on data science, we believe there’s ample opportunity to design and build better processes that avoid duplicative or inefficient data processes and enable more efficient data usage.
At Crux, we sit at the intersection of data and finance and see firsthand the need among firms to set their data infrastructure on a more sustainable path. In our analysis, it’s not a question of why sustainability is essential–it is simply something that needs to be done. Our community brings together data owners, data consumers, and technologists, all of whom share the energy usage of the broader data ecosystem. We embrace our role as connectors to provide a place for important conversations on sustainability to take place. By fostering this dialogue, we hope to find ways together to make the data supply chain and the use of ESG data more efficient.
We invite our entire community to join over 25 of the leading experts and thought leaders in the sustainable technology and ESG investing sectors for 9 carefully crafted and impactful discussions on these and many other topics during our Data & Sustainability Summit on June 23rd and 24th. RSVP here.
Crux: Sep 28, 2023
