TECH-IT-OUT: Developing a Carbon Neutral Strategy for Business

In this tech panel episode of Krome Cast Tech IT Out, we delve into the critical topic of developing a carbon-neutral strategy, aligned with government-mandated targets; we explore how to measure your emissions and the ways to reduce carbon emissions that can help drive sustainable change.

This episode features Krome’s Commercial Director Sam Mager, Technical Director Ben Randall, CEO, Rupert Mills and Danielle Hammond, Krome's Operation Director. Our panelists share their insights and experiences on reducing carbon emissions and creating a sustainable business model. 

We discuss the intricacies of measuring emissions across the three scopes defined by global standards, and we explore the practical steps businesses can take to mitigate their environmental impact. 

Our panellists also delve into the significance of setting targets to align with government-mandated objectives and we discuss how companies can leverage technology solutions to help reduce emissions effectively.

As an organisation we started our journey toward carbon neutrality in 2021, we’ve made a commitment to ensure sustainability is at the core of our operations, and we aim to halve our emissions before 2035, achieving net-zero emissions ahead of the UK’s 2050 target.

► ABOUT KROME: Krome Technologies is a technically strong, people-centric technology consultancy, focused on delivering end-to-end infrastructure and security solutions that solve business challenges and protect critical data. We work collaboratively with clients, forming long-term business partnerships, applying knowledge, experience and the resources our clients need to solve problems, design solutions and co-create agile, efficient and scalable IT services.

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Transcript

SPEAKERS

Rupert Mills, Danielle Hammond, Ben Randall, Sam Mager

Sam Mager  00:00

Welcome to Krome Cast, Tech IT Out. We're here today to talk about reducing your carbon emissions and Tech Zero. And joined again by Rupert, Ben, and a new face to the podcast. Danielle Hammond, our Operations Director. 

Danielle Hammond  00:24

Thanks for having me. 

Sam Mager  00:25

So Rupert, as usual, I want to chuck it to you to walk through the topics we're going to as a panel walkthrough today?

Rupert Mills  00:29

Sure. I think we're going to talk first of all about developing a carbon neutral strategy, then measuring and reporting, Danielle, then talking about technology innovations, Ben, and then we'll come back to any other green initiatives.

Sam Mager  00:40

Cool. Do you want to kick us off then? 

Rupert Mills  00:42

Yeah. Cool. So developing a carbon neutral strategy, why are we doing it? What are we doing? Why are other people doing it? I think it's all about hitting the the government mandated guidelines, but that's for the good of the environment. Obviously, it's not, it's not just about hitting a target, there is an element of hitting a target. But it's it's if you don't put a target in place, people continually push that out, and you'll continually move further away. So the the targets are sort of 2030 and 2050, broadly, that are mandated. And actually, with the 2030 target, it's actually quite close now.

Sam Mager  01:14

I was just about to say, I think, you think about, it's quite far away, but actually the way time moves so quickly, it'll be here before we know it. And there's actually quite, quite a lot to do. Right?

Rupert Mills  01:22

Yeah, loads to do. And I think you're seeing it already taking place. It's been it's been coming in and, and I think it kind of almost went a bit quiet during COVID. And now people are back and going, Okay, we now need to think about this, because in a few years time, we have to have hit these targets. So it's not the you, you're aiming to start things in 2030, you're aiming to hit targets by 2030. So the government have said for businesses that turnover more than 36 million, more than 18 million on the balance sheet, or more than 250 staff, if you hit two out of those three criteria, you have to hit certain targets by 2030. And you need to be starting to do it - now. There's a lot of reporting coming in. So the NHS, for example, have said, if you take them as an organisation, they've said that from 2023, if you're doing any procurement, exercise with the NHS, that is 5 million pounds or over, then you have to have a carbon reduction strategy in place from 2024. That's full stop, any procurement. 

Sam Mager  02:18

Any amount.

Rupert Mills  02:19

Any. So that's forcing the hand in a good way of companies like us.

Sam Mager  02:23

It's understandable, it has to happen right, because otherwise people will, if there isn't a compelling event of you have to, people will sit back, and if it's just yeah, it becomes mandatory. I think there's not just gonna be NHS, I think we're gonna see that a lot of the, the RFPs we do for other the businesses, we're starting to see now arent we, can you evidence, tech zero strategy, and all that sort of stuff which is good, because we will have to get there. And this was reasons to do it. But it is starting to push that envelope. 

Rupert Mills  02:46

Yeah. So you know that with those big companies where the government's put the strategies in places and said you need to start doing this, that's actually trickling down to business like, we don't hit the sort of 36 million, 18 million, 250 staff - yet. But on the on the other hand, we're getting our bigger customers who hit those already asking us what are we doing? Because we're going to be in there further down scopes. Danielle, will talk about the scopes in a minute. But you sort of look at your carbon reduction. We've been doing some work on it for quite a while now. Danielle, again, will talk about it, but but from my standpoint, we're seeing customers coming to us and say, we've done this bit, we've done this bit Now to do this bid, we need to talk to you. 

Sam Mager  03:23

Yeah. 

Rupert Mills  03:24

And that's forcing action.

Sam Mager  03:25

It moves into their supply chain, right, 

Rupert Mills  03:27

Yeah, absolutely.

Sam Mager  03:27

Which is gonna be, it will downstream from all businesses to businesses, of our size, bigger and smaller.

Rupert Mills  03:33

Yeah. And I think it's a practical way of the government or various different organisational bodies, mandating this comes down to small businesses, because to regulate and monitor that for every small business is going to be virtually impossible. But if you're making the mid tier businesses do it, yeah, then effectively

Sam Mager  03:48

You police it further up the tree right, just by making it mandatory at that level, we're all part of that same supply chain. So like you say they come to us, what are you doing? Can you evidence it, and they've only got to police, the people here once and the downstream of that is many businesses below that still have to, if they want to take part, you know, follow the rules. 

Rupert Mills  04:03

Yeah, absolutely. 

Sam Mager  04:04

Okay, that's a good introduction, I suppose we should probably move into the, how was it measured piece then?

Danielle Hammond  04:10

Yeah, absolutely. As Rupert said, for us to be able to devise a strategy, how we're going to reduce or offset our carbon emissions, we first need to understand what is it, what activities are we doing that contribute to that number? So using the greenhouse gas protocol framework. 

Sam Mager  04:25

Easy for you to say. 

Danielle Hammond  04:26

Absolutely yep, as as Rupert said, It's divided into three scopes. So scope one is all about your direct emission. So, business operational activities that we have control over so for example, company vehicles, we can choose what type of vehicle we have, and how often we use it. scope three is indirect energy, so purchased energy electricity, gas consumption, 

Rupert Mills  04:51

Scope Two.

Danielle Hammond  04:51

Scope two. Sorry. Scope three, which is the more broader scope is all about your indirect or other indirect consumption. And this is where third parties come into play. And as Rupert alluded to, our suppliers become part of our scope three, but for our clients, we're their supply, therefore we're their scope 3. 

Sam Mager  05:12

This is where it downstream right. 

Danielle Hammond  05:14

Absolutely. So now we understand what the scopes are, the three different scopes, we then need to look at the activities, you know your business operational tasks that we're doing that contribute to that to that number. And I'll go to scope three, as I said, that's the broader of the scopes. And this is when we're reliant on third parties providing us with with data. Scope two is very easy, we can look at our electricity and our gas consumption, you can get that from your energy provider, as I said scope one, is activities that we are in control of, so we should be able to get the data ourselves. But in scope three, there may be some activities that we just can't get the data for that there's there's no way of measuring it. So therefore, we have to omit some of the activities that we do, because we just have no easy way of measuring. And we just have to reference that in our report that say we do this, but at this time, we can't we can't measure it. That's not to say that further down the line, you know, in the following years, that tools will come into place that we can then measure them. But there's no you know, it's, it's okay to say we can't measure it right now. And there might be partial data that we can get. And therefore we have to make some assumptions to get to our you know, the figure that we're then going to report on. And activities that fall under scope three are activities such as employee commuting, 

Sam Mager  06:31

Yeah. 

Danielle Hammond  06:32

So surveying your your employees to see how they're coming to work and what methods they're using. Looking at business travel, you know, how often are we traveling, what method of transport we're using to travel. Datacenter, you know, the power that we're consuming via data centers, and also distribution. So where we can't use Krome vehicles, to deliver goods to our clients, we may rely on couriers, and also goods that we're receiving into, you know, into ourselves, you may be reliant on couriers as well. So, and like I said, this is where it gets quite challenging, because you are the dependent on third parties giving you information you need. And they might not be in a position to be able to give you what you need. But I think it's quite daunting to start with, and I'm certainly no expert. And, you know, we chose our base year be in 2021, which, as we know, was second year of the pandemic. So, whilst we aim to reduce our carbon emissions, it is going to fluctuate depending on when you choose your base year to do because the first half of the year, we were working from home, then we were coming back kind of one two days a week. So whilst our employee commuting and our energy consumption for the you know, for the building, may reduce for that year, you're gonna see possibly a significant rise, you know, in the following years. And again, you just have to, you know, you have to just acknowledge that, and and say this is why. 

Sam Mager  07:55

This may be a common challenge for for everyone, because a lot of people had that either full, remote, or hybrid, and there's a lot of people now, certainly noise in the press, and I'm a fan of it, you know, we've gone back to at least three days in, and also a lot of our customers and more businesses going three plus days in, so everyones going to have that same challenge where if they baselined, kind of in the pandemic, went yeah we're great, that's going to ramp up my guess that's where we need to look at some of the things we can do. I wont steal your thunder, but there's certain things we're doing here to reduce our carbon emissions further. And there's stuff I know, we've looked at our infrastructure and whatnot to drive that down. So if you want to jump at this point, and we'll go back to you Danielle in a bit about some of the things we're doing. 

Ben Randall  08:32

Yeah, sure. I mean, you know, as part of this, we, obviously, we're looking at modernising our technology stack the the stuff that we use internally, and one thing that's quite apparent when we start really examining that it's surprising how much more efficient the newer kit is. So for example, replacing your five, ten year old servers with something newer will have, it has a considerable benefit, not only in storage capacity and speed, your compute ability of these servers, even though it might still be functional, you find the actual power consumption is considerably lower. So there's a, there's a big bonus there. I mean, we really found that changing some old storage arrays out we had a big load of them, changing them to something which was much more dense, that dramatically lowered the power consumption. Yeah, we're able to get that data from the from the data center where all that kit is located. And so it made it quite handy for us to, with Danielle's exercise of working out where the power consumption was going. Because obviously, they can provide that that information on how many amps we're drawing from our racks, you know, so,

Sam Mager  09:37

I guess also the, your physical footprint. So that helps, the amount of power it's consuming helps. And it produces less heat than obviously the more monolithic kind of arrays and stuff used to.

Ben Randall  09:47

So it's a sort of a virtuous circle, really, if you if you've got something that's generating or taking less power, it's generating less heat, so it's less air conditioning required by the datacenter, which lowers their PUE which is power utilisation efficiency. 

Sam Mager  10:02

I knew that...

Ben Randall  10:02

So basically, it's the total power, they sort of the the power used to drive it kit divided by the total power. So you want to get that down to down to one, if possible. So yeah, sorry, the other way around actually, it's total power divided by the, by the actual power divide, to run the IT kit. So you want to get that figure as close to one as possible, or as far, as low as possible.

Sam Mager  10:25

Okay, and I guess that also, going back to you, Danielle, some of the things we've done, and not just us what other people will be doing in the offices as well around what we can do around, I won't steal your thunder too much, but our device changes and lights and so on. 

Danielle Hammond  10:38

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, putting your lights on PIR sensors so that then you don't no one forgets to turn them off at the end of the day, you know, that there'll be on a timer and and, you know, save energy that way. We replace monitors. So you know, that that will be more energy efficient and drawing less power,

Ben Randall  10:59

There was the move to laptops as well, 

Danielle Hammond  11:01

Move to laptops 

Ben Randall  11:02

Away from Desktop PCs.

Danielle Hammond  11:02

Absolutely. Yes. So you know..

Rupert Mills  11:04

With the monitors when you used to sit in front of the old big screen monitors, and you feel the heat coming of them? 

Danielle Hammond  11:08

Yes. 

Rupert Mills  11:09

Now actually, you just don't feel that because they're so much more efficient.

Danielle Hammond  11:11

Yeah, absolutely.

Sam Mager  11:13

Seem to always, when we visit someone in London, the big buildings, and there's a floor still lit up. And there might be a person working in there. But it's the whole thing that people are not doing, little things like zoning, PIRs, I mean, this is not the biggest office in the world, but it is zoned, so if we're in here overnight, we're in that end, and it's just that end that's lit up. Whereas I see it all the time in London, its just a whole floor, you might see the cleaner, is slowly working their way around, you think this is a fantastic waste of energy.

Ben Randall  11:37

And those sort of changes must be really, really not expensive in terms of a whole office floor,

Sam Mager  11:43

It's surely you must be, especially buildings like that, you must be able do the calculations. So it can pay for itself, the ROI has got to be that pretty quick.

Ben Randall  11:50

Weeks, I should imagine.

Rupert Mills  11:52

The challenge, though is, that a lot those companies don't own the buildings they're in. So from that perspective, they got to work out how to invest. There's huge targets on building new construction now and what you've got to do and how it's got to be efficient, all the rest of it. But they don't really have that much in the way of regulation other than this new stuff that's coming in, to make you go back and change historic stuff. So doing things like insulating buildings properties is massive. I was chatting to someone the other day, who was telling me that they worked on a project where the design of the, the way in which the sun moves around the building, and the blinds are all electric and the blinds come down during the day as the sun moves around the building and then wind back up. And that mirroring was done to save huge amounts of air conditioning power. So it saves it saves tons and tons of co2 on that one floor in that building. So big office building in central London. And one floor on that building, the company that rented that floor, the CEO said I don't like the blinds down, I want to be able to see our view, and this that and the other, and they've actually measured now and said that the consumption for that floor in terms of air conditioning power is just way higher than all the other floors where we've got the blinds doing this mirroring. And it's using technology in smart ways. And when Ben talked about CPUs and stuff, but the the ability to use tech, IoT, etc. To move this all forwards as well. I mean, the the the, the LEDs and in lights instead moving on to PIR and everything is a massive change for us, but we invested in it because we own our building. So it's one of those things when you say actually, it's a worthwhile investment for us. I mean, I know you've been doing some more stuff recently.

Danielle Hammond  13:24

Yeah, absolutely. We just at the moment having solar panels installed on the roof

Sam Mager  13:30

Explains the scaffolding in the background.

Danielle Hammond  13:31

Yep, yep, absolutely. And, you know, obviously, upfront that can be quite huge financial cost. But over time, you should get return, of you know, return on your investment, and reduce your energy consumption. So, you know, you'll save on the pounds there as well as you know, saving on our co2 emissions.

Ben Randall  13:48

Because most of our energy here is electricity isn't it, t o run this building.

Danielle Hammond  13:52

Absolutely, yeah. Yeah. So and then talking about air conditioning and heating, you know, putting your system on it on a timer so that it's not running again, someone not remembering to turn it off at the end of the day, it will turn on in the morning and turn off in the evening. It's all small things, 

Sam Mager  14:07

It is small things, I think it's also, certainly a lot of it's common sense. But also, I think legislation, and so on will drive that. So if you lack common sense, you're gonna have to get some, and do the right thing.

Rupert Mills  14:18

We're all busy, right? So it's what's what's at the top of your priority list. So unless somebody makes that environmental change at the top of your priority list, there are people out there who go Yeah, we really want to do that. And we've been trying to do that with things like the WEEE initiative for years and reducing printing and cycle to work schemes. And now we're doing, starting to put together an EV for, an EV scheme for staff. But all of those things, if they're not brought to the top of your priority list, but this whole driver now and they're coming down, tearing down through big businesses is making everybody think about it, rather than just people who stop and think right, I really, really want to do this. It's making it a problem for everyone to go and solve, which it is, we've all created the problem. So 

Sam Mager  14:54

100% 

Rupert Mills  14:54

It's up to us all to go and solve it.

Sam Mager  14:56

Fair enough, cool. Thank you guys very interesting. And thank you Danielle for joining us on the podcast. 

Danielle Hammond  15:01

Thanks for having me. 

Sam Mager  15:03

And thank you for joining us on this edition. If there's anything you'd like to cover in future episodes, please leave it in the comment section below and like, comment, subscribe and share or join us again next time on Krome Cast, Tech IT Out.