One company’s path to climate neutrality - Prime Computer
Prime Computer, an award-winning Swiss IT manufacturer, and recent signatory of Techies Go Green, has been a completely climate-neutral company since 2021. Prime Computer recently joined Techies Go Green In this blog post, they explain how they achieved this milestone so other companies can follow the same path.
What is climate neutrality?
The idea of climate neutrality was originally laid out in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. To achieve climate neutrality, greenhouse gas emissions should be first measured and then reduced as much as possible. Finally, any unavoidable emissions should be offset through climate protection measures or carbon trading schemes. The result is a balance between emissions caused and emissions avoided - in other words, neutrality.
Through this process, companies and their products and services can be made climate neutral. When striving for climate neutrality within your organization, it’s important to keep three core principles in mind: Avoid, Reduce and Compensate.
Avoid things like a high energy consumption, unnecessary packaging, and excessive waste production. Evaluate your products and services in the context of ‘avoid’ too. For example, Prime Computer has thoroughly examined and improved its products' durability, fail ratios, and ease of potential repairs. This avoids emissions as far as possible while maintaining the highest standards in product quality and performance.
Sometimes it’s not possible to completely avoid certain things, and that’s fine; you can also minimize your negative impact by Reducing. Reducing can be applied to the same areas as the concept of ‘avoiding,’ such as energy consumption, packaging materials, and waste.
An additional tip: If you cannot avoid or reduce, think 'Replace.' For example, replacing plastic with biodegradable packaging will lower your environmental impact.
The last of the three core principles is Compensate. When avoiding or reducing emissions somewhere in the process or supply chain cannot be achieved, compensating is the final option. It is important that any projects used to compensate or offset emissions are certified by a reliable third party, e.g. Gold Standard or Verified Carbon Standard.
Prime Computer offsets its unavoidable emissions through a certified project. In addition, they offer a second life-cycle program where old devices are given a second use – thus saving emissions!
Calculating emissions
Where do you start?
To start reducing, you need to know where the biggest emission sources are. Measuring the company's own carbon footprint - i.e. the total greenhouse gases produced directly or indirectly by the company and its products - is a logical starting point.
All seven greenhouse gases according to the Kyoto Protocol need to be taken into account. These are then converted and reported as a single unit: CO2 equivalents (CO2e).
To follow the GHG Protocol standards, three categories of emissions must be captured by businesses reporting their carbon footprints:
Scope 1 - Direct emissions from a company, e.g. the CO2 emitted by a company's vehicle fleet.
Scope 2 - Indirect emissions from purchased energy, e.g. electricity usage within company buildings.
Scope 3 - Indirect emissions that are not within the company's direct sphere of influence, such as the supply chain.
Once you map these three sources of emissions throughout your company, products, and supply chain, you can begin to minimise them.
Emissions of products
The biggest sources of emissions for industrial manufacturers are usually the products themselves. A product's footprint should show the total sum of greenhouse gases emitted during its life cycle, encompassing production, distribution, use, and disposal.
The first step is to determine the goal and scope of the investigation. It must be clear which emissions are being calculated and where the boundary falls. In the second phase, the production processes of the individual products are mapped out. Depending on the complexity of the processes, different tools can be used to analyse the footprints.
If you buy raw materials or semi-finished products, cooperation with suppliers to analyse processes and calculate emissions is unavoidable. If sufficient information is unavailable, you can use empirical values or studies to estimate emissions.
Verification
To avoid errors, an independent party should verify the calculated footprint. This party can also help with empirical data in case of ambiguities. A notable partner that Prime Computer used to help with scope 3 calculations is M&P Group/Go Blue Now.
It should now be clear that climate neutrality is the outcome of a series of climate protection measures. Wherever possible, greenhouse gas emissions should be avoided or reduced at the outset. Once you compensate appropriately for any remaining unavoidable emissions, your company will be completely climate neutral. Prime Computer is pleased to have achieved this important step but continues to focus on reducing its emissions and moving towards a circular economy.
About Prime Computer
Prime Computer have dedicated themselves to creating truly sustainable IT hardware products. Their highly energy efficient IT products are durable, created through a circular model, and are recycled afterwards. Since April 2021, they are proudly 100% climate neutral. Their product, the Prime Mini 5, has even won the Green Product Award 2021!
If you are interested in how Prime Computer’s mini-PCs and servers can help you in your mission to achieve climate neutrality, please check out the Prime Computer Website and feel free to contact them if you have any questions.
Did you know?
10% of energy consumption and 4% of carbon emissions in Europe come from the ICT industry. But it doesn’t have to be that way!
Prime Computer has put together an overview of some IT and ICT solution providers that can help improve your IT department's sustainability without compromising quality.