Around the Alliance #6: Creating transparency for the supply chain of software

We hosted our 6th Around the Alliance session live on LinkedIn on Thursday, 24 March at 14:00 CET.

What was the session about?

As the Digital Carbon Footprint is our number one priority on our Roadmap agenda for 2022, we discussed progress made to date. Software generates emissions through its underlying infrastructure. However, we also have to measure and report on the embedded emission of the infrastructure. For which it is essential to create transparency throughout the software supply chain.

Key takeaways

1. It's almost impossible to find a solution for a problem when you don't have any data → to gather more valuable data about the environmental footprint of software we need transparency and open data
2. Many people don't care about a digital carbon footprint, simply because they are not aware of the underlying problem and don't know the numbers
3. We need a unified methodology for reporting on the digital carbon footprint → otherwise every supplier reports their data in a different way
4. Sustainability should not be a sacrifice, sustainable products have to be convenient to be competitive
5. We need collaboration between governments and the digital economy in defining the digital carbon footprint

Attendees

This Around the Alliance session was moderated by our Founder Max Schulze, and featured three panelists sharing their insights and experience:

• Chris Adams, Director - The Green Web Foundation
• Leonieke Mevius, Community Manager Corporate Social Responsibility - SURF
• Kris Sharma, Executive Product Management - Canonical

Content of the AtA session

We started with a warm welcoming from our moderator Max, and short introductions from our six panelists, followed by an in-depth discussion facilitated by Mohan and contributory questions from the audience. The timestamps for the questions and topics we discussed are below:

• General introduction: 0:00
• Short introduction of the panelists 1:05
• Why would it be interesting to show the environmental footprint of software? 2:03
• Do we have a transparent software supply chain? 11:33
• Look into the future: what would change if every software developer or vendor knew the environmental foot of their software? 14:40
• Why is it so hard to get information for the environmental footprint? 32:10
• If you could take a guess, which digital service or product produces the biggest carbon footprint? 42:56

Bringing together this knowledgeable panel with varied perspectives generated an interesting discussion with strong opinions and expert insights. Enjoy watching the recording via the link at the top of the page. A big thank you to Leonieke, Kris, and Chris for joining us, as well as everyone that attended this event!

If you don't want to miss the next Around the Alliance session, follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter. If you are interested in being a panelist for the next event, please reach out to us at: [email protected].