Sustainability At Arch Summit 2022: “Together We Can Move The Needle”

(Moderator) Kim Hurst, Strategy & Planning Manager, Vodafone Maria Vittoria Trussoni, Head of Sustainability & Green Tech, NTT Data Nicole Zethelius, GH of Sustainability & ESG Strategy, CGI Patrick Blankers, Program Manager Sustainability, Ericsson Anthony Darcy, Global Sustainability Director, Nokia Andreas Grewing, Head of Telecom Power Solutions EMEA, Delta Electronics (© Silicon Luxembourg)

A central theme of our times, sustainability was also a much-discussed topic on day 1 of Arch Summit 2022. These are our 5 sustainability takeaways of the day.

Digital Transformation and Sustainability must complement each other.

A twin policy of the Luxembourg government, the first day at Arch Summit was an important reminder that sustainability and digitalisation are inextricably linked. While it’s easier to treat both challenges individually, digitalisation without regard for the environment will only delay the achievement of our climate targets.

As said economy minister Franz Fayot: “Digitalisation is not an end in and of itself. It’s about making sure technology is working for the people and the planet.” 

Companies, people and governments must act together to achieve net zero.

While some companies are on track to achieve their emission reduction targets, most are falling far behind. During today’s talk themed “Are corporations serious about net-zero?”, four sustainability experts discussed what remains to be done for companies to achieve their net zero goals.

Ahead of the pack, Vodafone seems to have set the most ambitious goal for itself – the company wants to achieve net zero by 2030 and net zero for its entire value chain by 2040. While the other attendees were slightly less ambitious, all of them stressed the importance of being more transparent and working more together with partners.

Talking about who needs to pay the green premium of the energy transition, Vodafone’s group director of device operations Dominique Rousseau, “We could play the name game but that is not going to work. I think we should all pay for it.” A similar sentiment was echoed by James Feger, General Manager For Service Providers at F5 who said: “Individually we can have a small impact but together we can move the needle.”

“We can only change what we measure.”

Talking about working together is one thing, actually doing it is another. While companies are currently trying to figure out how to lower their emissions – especially the elusive Scope 3 emissions – one element that kept coming back in the panel discussions was the importance of data.

For many companies, emissions are this obscure thing they know they need to lower but don’t know how to get a proper grasp on. Well, as said Anthony Darcy, Nokia’s global sustainability director: “We can only change what we measure.” 

Share Your Green Data.

While accurate and standardised emissions reporting is a great start, the panel members of the talk titled “Driving innovation to address climate change” all agreed that sharing this data as well as best practices with other companies was critical to lowering emissions.

If everyone keeps their green data findings to themselves, progress will be slow, that’s why Maria Vittoria Trussoni, Head of Sustainability & Green Tech, NTT Data said: “All Green Data should be public data.”

Against innovation for the sake of innovation.

At a conference about innovation, it can be easy to forget the bigger picture of why we need innovation in the first place. While innovation for the sake of innovation can be fun and profitable, most speakers seemed to agree that the turbulent times we live in require us to tie innovation to practical goals. 

“Sometimes we have innovation without the impact. One does not equal the other,” commented Anthony Darcy, Nokia’s global sustainability director.

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