As the pandemic created a renewed sense of urgency for sustainability, CIOs are being looked at to head those efforts as IT becomes a growing source for energy consumption, FastCompany reported March 24.
As the CIO role rose to prominence during the pandemic because of increased technology usage and digital efforts, IT now underpins nearly all lines of business, becoming a large user of energy consumption.
This means CIOs will become crucial to drafting and implementing environmental, social and corporate strategies for their organizations. Here are a few ways to approach that, according to FastCompany:
- CIOs need to become more vocal and hands-on in defining environmental, social and governance — or ESG — goals.
- CIOs should benchmark the performance of current systems, setting targets and sketching road maps to decarbonize supporting systems.
- Increase the mix of renewable energy sources for data centers or adopt a circular life cycle approach when it comes to procuring hardware and services.