IT emissions—including data centers—now comprise about 40 percent of total emissions. A deeper dive reveals that devices account for the vast majority of emissions. In reality, they represent about 60 percent of all emissions in the sector. This gap underscores an important imperative to reimagine how we use sustainability metrics in the tech sector.
Just in Europe, the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) has put in place mandatory reporting requirements for about 11,700 companies. As of today, these companies need to report their emissions under established frameworks. Even with such guidelines, some of these metrics still account for just a fraction, covering only about 30 percent of total IT sector emissions. This gap highlights the need for better measurement approaches that capture impacts beyond data center operations alone.
The Emissions Landscape of Data Centers
Data center operations alone account for just 24 percent of overall IT emissions. Data center world embodied carbon is a huge concern. By that measure, it represents only around 16 percent of total emissions produced during the manufacturing and construction phases alone. This figure shines a light on the discrepancy with device manufacturing, which is responsible for 45 percent of embodied carbon emission.
In other words, Google has outpaced the efficiency gains across the entire global data center industry. They’ve done this while doubling energy efficiency rates that are 1.5 times higher than the national industry average. This achievement heralds exciting possibilities for how to go even deeper in reducing operational emissions. In fact, data centers are bursting at the seams to accommodate AI workloads. By 2028, their electricity usage will represent 6.7 to 12 percent of total U.S. electricity, raising significant sustainability alarm bells.
Data centers are amongst the worst actors when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions. Yet the end-user devices generate 1.5 to 2 times the carbon footprint of all data centers put together. With most of a device’s emissions upfront in manufacturing, the need to tackle embodied carbon is key to creating meaningful sustainability ambitions.
The Impact of Device Manufacturing
About three-quarters of a device’s total emissions occur during the manufacturing stage, commonly known as embodied carbon. To put this into context, the average production of one smartphone creates 50 kg of CO2e. Smartphones — more than one billion of which are replaced every year — are in this category. This huge number results in a mind-boggling cocoon of 50 million tonnes of CO2 emissions just from smartphone production!
The environmental cost of laptops Each additional laptop used has quite an environmentally costly impact, as each implementation creates an estimated 200 kg CO2e in manufacturing. This points to a major opportunity to lead in decreasing the overall carbon impact of technology devices. You can add extension of smartphone lifecycles from two years to three years. The RECOMP Act would lower yearly emissions from manufacturing by a remarkable 33 percent!
Campaigns like GreenSKUs and others prove that a minimum 8 percent reduction in embodied carbon is possible. Making these changes isn’t just achievable—it can have concrete, positive impacts on reducing net emissions throughout the entire IT industry.
A Call for Comprehensive Reporting
As demonstrated by the recent emissions reporting under the CSRD, it is clear that current frameworks are insufficient. Limiting ourselves to only 30 percent of total IT sector emissions makes it impossible to take meaningful and effective sustainability initiatives. This approach prevents us from truly understanding the environmental harms.
Filling in the gaps will take the combined commitment of all industry stakeholders to continue increasing transparency and developing more rigorous measurement methodologies. And for companies to better understand their environmental impact, they need to develop holistic metrics. So commercialized metrics should address the operational carbon and the embodied carbon in devices and data centers, equally.
Companies are making major strides to achieve their sustainability ambitions. To get it right, they need to be focused both on the operational efficiency of the data centers and the lifecycle emissions associated with their devices. Engaging in a comprehensive and meaningful approach to sustainability goes beyond operational efficiencies and maximizing reductions in emissions across the board. It helps create a greener tech industry.