ESG & Technology: Impacts and Implications

How to effectively treat environmental, social and governance issues, collectively known as ‘ESG,’ is shaping up to be one of the most significant agendas of our time. Major commitments are being made in company boardrooms, but the ESG mandate is challenging for many companies to embrace.

The role of the technology industry is underexplored, yet it has outsized potential to influence the mandate. Investors, consumers, technology buyers, end users and suppliers are trying to understand the implications of ESG and what it means for how technology is used. We anticipate the range of discussions around technology and ESG will rapidly become more frequent, specific and strategic.

As more organizations offload the data and services their customers use into cloud computing infrastructure, the datacenter providers supplying key parts of that infrastructure consume significant amounts of energy. While their power consumption is increasingly being shifted to green sources, some elements of their operations are more difficult to switch. This challenge will drive innovation and make datacenter operators increasingly sophisticated players in the power markets.

As businesses organize around their ESG commitments, they will increasingly want to know not just that their suppliers themselves take sustainability issues seriously, but that the technologies and services they procure can directly support their own strategies.

Using the 451 Research Datacenter KnowledgeBase dataset, now available via Xpressfeed™ and Snowflake, you can assess market and region energy current and future demand from datacenters. Learn more at www.spglobal.com/451ResearchDCKB.