(ambient music) (country blues music) (upbeat music with vocalization) Hi, I'm Matt Watts, and we're here filming our series "Watt's The Future" where we take a look at different aspects of technology and we talk to some people on the street and some technology experts about how this is going to affect us and our world as we look to the future. Today's episode though is going be focused on maybe one of the more alarming aspects of technology and that's sustainability. I bet many of you don't realize that when you pick up your mobile phone and send a text or an email, every time you do that it creates approximately half a gram of CO2. Now, that may not sound like very much, but there are 6 1/2 billion mobile phone users in the world today. If every one of them were to send a text message or an email, that equates to thousands of tons of CO2 emissions. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. If we actually look to the future, the global data that we estimate we'll create as we get towards 2030 is going to be one yottabyte of data. So maybe you don't know what a yottabyte is... But rather than me tell you, why don't we go and ask a few people? ♪ One two three ♪Because I just wanna be me ♪Just wanna be me ♪ So I just wanted to, are you interested in the topic of sustainability? Is that something that you think about that often? Yes. Yeah, definitely. And do you think a little bit about things like how much carbon emissions get created by when you send an email or a TikTok video? Do you ever think about that kind of stuff? And what do you think it would be? Not stuff like that, I've never thought about it. I always think about it in like a physical sense, like sending parcels or like food. Have you ever heard the term "yottabyte?" Yottabyte? I don't even know. Biting yachts, or... (Matt laughs) that's yottabyte, no. Is it bigger than a gigabyte or something, or...? We need a drink. Have a drink. No idea. Thank you, guys. We so enjoyed it. So the thing about data is it has mass, it has gravity. That email that we create, that text message that we send, as it's moving around the mobile networks and then finally lands on a storage device in a data center somewhere, it's accumulating and creating a carbon emissions footprint all of the way through that. The challenge is that we don't see it. It's very easy to point to a car, or a bus, or a lorry and see that that's creating emissions. But with data it's much less tangible but still significant. So what is a yottabyte? We never did get the answer to that question. Well, a yottabyte is a thousand zettabytes, which is a trillion terabytes. And maybe I'm not helping you that much here. Think about it this way. It's equivalent to every single person on the planet carrying around 500 mobile phones. But let's go and talk to some experts and dig into the topic in a little bit more detail. (electronic house music) I sat down with NetApp's president, César Cernuda, who has a real passion for sustainability, to ask what his views are. The whole point of this series is sustainability. And COP 26, that is, the 26th time that the United Nations have got people together to talk about sustainability... But this time it feels different. What's your view on that? This is real. Let me start with that. I think it's real because climate change is a reality. That's why we talk about, ESG: Environmental, Social, and Governance. And more companies are having an ESG leader, an ESG agenda inside their companies. And even on several boards they're starting to have an ESG committee, which is really looking into that sustainability plan and commitment from the company. You've still almost walked me towards a point which I just wanted to kind of get some thoughts from you around as well, and that's greenwashing. And I'm not going to name names, because it wouldn't be the right place to do it, but I do have a concern that you'll see companies using this as a marketing opportunity. So do I believe there's a little bit of greenwashing? Unfortunately, the answer is yes. Coming and trying to brand that or use that as a marketing opportunity, I don't think that's great. As companies, we have an obligation, as well, to have a sustainability plan. Governments, regulators, have been accelerating big time. There's access to capital which is based on: what are your sustainability plans? Can you show me your plan to net zero? What is your Scope 1, Scope 2, and Scope 3? And my suspicion is that what might feel good today by doing some greenwashing, using it as an opportunity to do some marketing, I think will come back very badly on companies that choose to take that approach in the future. There's many studies that show that those companies that have stronger commitments around sustainability are more profitable. It's company changing. It requires investment. It requires tough decisions. What sort of advice would you give to people? Because I know this is a passion for you as well. All of us have an obligation to leave a better world, not a worse world than the one that we found when we were born and we've been living in. So I encourage all my peers, our customers, but as well the peers in the industry, to ensure that we have an ESG plan. And it's not going to happen in 24 hours, but certainly we need to start now. (quirky upbeat dance music) So how does this compare to other industries? When we think about data, 60% to 70% of the data we create is never, ever used again after it's created. It's one giant landfill of data - that's sat on storage systems, consuming electricity, creating emissions - that we do absolutely nothing with. And to give you some context so that you can understand the scope of that, the data that we're creating, that 60% to 70%, the storage thatis sat on is currently creating more emissions than the entire airline industry. (engine accelerates) Mark Butcher works for a technology company and he's very,good at getting to the truths, and some of the mistruths, when it comes to sustainability in the IT sector. So hi, Mark. Could you tell us a little bit about the work your company is doing in and around sustainability? We're very focused in three key areas, which is pretty contextual for today. So, it's the world of FinOps, DevOps, and the newly developed area of GreenOps. Explain that a little bit more if you would. GreenOps effectively comes down to considering sustainability in all areas of IT, looking at operational processes, standards, design, methodologies, everything. And it's embedding it within your overall organizational structure. So how big of a challenge is this for the tech industry? It's pretty giant because it's a bit like the Wild West right now. There isn't really a consistent way of measuring sustainability or measuring emissions. We have to start measuring the impact of digital because people have just realized how big it actually is. Data centers are now consuming vast amounts of power, increasingly as we start to see an uptake of things like AI. So is that what GreenOps is all about? These big data centers are effectively operating a bit like power stations with the sheer amount of power they're actually consuming, and that's before you even get into areas like water consumption. But actually the big bit that we're missing is what's called the embedded emissions, which are way,bigger than just those associated with electricity, power, and cooling. Because the embedded emissions is everything that comes from the construction of the infrastructure. It's not exactly a great secret that if you go into the average organization, there's an awful lot of waste in the platforms and the services. Oversized servers, you've got vast amounts of storage that maybe isn't actually required because it's either data that's never been looked at, is never gonna be looked at again, or wasn't required in the first place. So it's actually quite easy for us to start looking at ways that we can firstly measure what we're doing and be accountable for it, but also start remediating it, fixing it, and making things more cost effective and efficient. If you think back, one of the things that we've always focused on was kind of shrinking the footprint, reducing the costs, increasing the efficiency. But it's always been very financially motivated. But in some cases, more important than actually reducing costs is now increasing sustainability and reducing emissions. Are you seeing the same? Since COP26, it's fundamentally shifted. And the key thing is all these organizations have made net zero deadlines and claims for deadlines that they're going to meet, but they're now suddenly being asked to be held accountable for achieving those deadlines. It's external investors, it's venture capitalists, it's shareholders agitating. You've got customers saying, we're going to make our choice on the brands that we work with, or buy from, simply on the basis of do they align with our beliefs. Are they the right kind of brands that we want to work with? Do we want to be seen buying from them and using their products and services? Employees are selecting who they want to go and work for based upon, again, how they align with their ethics and their beliefs. Then there's obviously external governments as well. So whichever way you look, there's kind of pressure on them to actually deliver. How do we become more sustainable without slowing down the pace of innovation though, Mark? So take a big bank that's spending hundreds of millions or billions of dollars a year on IT services. If I could show them how being sustainable would release say 300, 400 million dollars back, straight into their bottom line, that money could be used to actually invest in the services, the people, and the processes that they can't, they don't necessarily have budget for today. There is a flip side to that. The big auditors and the big consulting organizations are all rapidly building sustainability functions so they can carry out audits for organizations. What that means is you're going to be having a carbon budget as well as a dollar budget within IT services. And what that's going to mean is a total shift in thinking. Do I put my workload in the U.S. where the carbon intensity is way,higher, so the emissions are higher, or do I put it in Sweden where they're really,low? That sounds like an easy decision. But to contrast that, if you're an AWS user, the cost of putting it in Sweden is probably about 25% to 30% higher. Someone's going to have to be accountable for that decision. People will be directly held accountable for deciding to be more or less sustainable. So one of the - I'm gonna call it a scourge - of this whole sustainability topic, is something called greenwashing. What do you tell people to look out for? Partly, it's accidental greenwashing in some places, where people don't even realize that it's happening. Some of it is, sadly, a little bit deliberate and coming from the corporate end of things. But a lot of it actually comes from lack of knowledge and lack of experience in the sector as well. But the problem we have in digital sustainability is the data quality today is not fantastic. And I've actually seen what you've done with the release of your carbon reporting, your analysis. You've actually done quite a thorough job because you've looked not just at the Scope 1 and 2, but you've also considered your Scope 3. You haven't ignored it. And if I contrast that with what I've seen from a few other technology vendors, and they're not auditing their supply chains, and that's when we get into those realms of accidental greenwashing. Scopes 1 and 2 are probably 5% of the actual emissions that are created by a company that sells a lot of goods, because you are responsible for those goods throughout their life cycle. Carbon accounting is becoming a specialist area in its own right. If I currently have a refresh cycle of three years, can I reduce my average in-year emissions from an accounting perspective by extending that to five years or seven years? Where and how do they make the decision to renew infrastructure, based upon the carbon budget as well as the dollar budget? Should I move from my current on-premises facility into a much more efficient co-location facility? Is that going to accidentally increase emissions elsewhere? Now, the cloud providers are doing a good job. Where does the cloud fit in? Is that the answer for this problem? They do a fantastic job of operating facilities as efficiently as they can, and they are investing a lot of money in new technologies, renewable energy. So they are doing all the right things. I think they could be moving faster in some areas. And it does come back to the fact that actually the average hyperscaler facility is massively more efficient and effective than the average, whether it's in a co-location or an on-premises data center. One of the things that you see in the world of cloud is actually a vast amount of cloud waste. At the lower end, it's about 30%. The average figure I've seen, and from my own personal experience, is between 40% and 45%. And if you think about cloud spend this year, it's likely to hit $500 billion this year. If 40% of that is wasted, that's what, $220, $230 billion worth of waste out there? So Mark, one of the things I've talked about is this kind of, I call it the landfill of data, which is this sort of statistic saying about 68% of the data we create is never, ever used again after it's created. And that's got to be both a challenge and an opportunity when we think about sustainability, right? It's a ginormous challenge, and it's one that's never changed. Sustainability is now a really outstanding angle that you can use to leverage that. Looking backwards at the vast amounts of stuff that you've already created, I think there's more value in looking upstream at changing your processes in the future. Hark back to when we used to have a lot of regulation or when regulations were really starting totake effect, I remember people saying, "It's difficult for us." I think it's the same with sustainability. So you go into the engineering development team and you tell them, "Here's an opportunity for you to do something more sustainably that can reduce our emissions," and you give them almost KPIs and targets that are measured in a way that makes sense to them, they will start doing something about that because they can see the outcome, they can measure it, and it's something that they probably care about personally. But the very first step of that is coming back to that first point: just start measuring. And sometimes it starts with a movement. DevOps started as a movement, and then became a practice that was much better defined. That's actually a really interesting point to consider is that one of the things that I think we need to be doing as an industry is coming together better to solve this problem in a consistent manner. The data center industry is measuring sustainability differently to how the infrastructure industry is doing it, which is different to how software developers do it, which is different to how cloud providers are doing it. You've got one tweet that you're able to send out, Mark, to kind of summarize what you think people should do. What would be that tweet? Start now. Start now and baseline would probably actually be a better one because you cannot improve what you haven't measured. And get the people involved because yourpeople within your organization will want to help once they understand the impact of their actions. We've covered a lot of different topics here, but Watts The Future? Optimistically, if we look out over the next kind of 5 to 10 years, Mark? If we do things right, we can very easily comfortably reduce the emissions related to IT by 40%, 50% without even thinking. Yes, it requires effort, but it's easily achievable. It's going to be a combination of all of that along with actually pressure from consumers and employees as well. And what it will do is start people thinking about why are we using what we're using. How can we do it better? And embed that as a culture. (energetic music) So this is definitely not all doom and gloom. It starts off by creating awareness. And now that you're more aware of the impact that technology can have, in terms of sustainability and emissions, then it's an opportunity for us to do something about it. Technology and data is transforming industries and creating entirely new opportunities, new possibilities for us. But we have to think about the future. Right now, data centers consume about 1% of the world's electricity. We forecast thatwill grow to maybe 8% of the world's electricity as we get towards 2030. So we need to take steps now. One of those steps is going to be looking to the cloud. The cloud providers have built incredibly efficient data centers that are typically net zero in many cases. So anything you take out of your data center and move into their cloud is a positive net zero reduction in carbon emissions. You need to challenge the vendors you work with. The technology partners that you have are supplying you with information and technology that goes into your data centers. Challenge them to help you reduce emissions, to help you be more efficient. And look to the future. There are some amazing technologies on the horizon from liquid cooling, to DNA-based storage, to quantum computing. But maybe those are for another episode. And these things, again, offer great promise for helping us reduce the emissions that are associated with technology as we go forward. So tune in for one of our other episodes and maybe we'll go into one or two of these things in more detail. (positive upbeat music continues)