With around 6,500 staff working across 50 sites, the organization is responsible for the strategic management, delivery and day-to-day operations related to commissioning healthcare services.

For carbon reduction, knowing is half the battle

A large healthcare organization faced significant challenges to meeting its clinical and financial objectives while improving sustainability. The company needed to cut carbon emissions in line with the Paris Agreement goals, while also recognizing the growing threat to health caused by climate change.

In 2020, the organization laid out stringent decarbonization targets, with a governmental mandate to deliver its own green plan for achieving net-zero ahead of 2050. For the IT department, the impending move to a new data center would deliver clear sustainability benefits, but the organization needed to capture and measure those benefits as part of a coordinated and accelerated decarbonization strategy. In 2021, the company engaged Atos to support its IT for Green journey, ensuring that technology became an enabler of reduced greenhouse gas emissions.

Establishing a robust baseline was the first challenge: the organization wanted to understand its current IT footprint and devise a strategy and implementation plan to meet its decarbonization targets.

As a trusted digital partner with decarbonization expertise, Atos was engaged to carry out a Digital Decarbonization Assessment.

Scoping out the situation

Atos worked with the organization’s stakeholders to carry out a study to assess all relevant strategies, plans and the organization’s IT landscape.

Establishing the baseline

The team used Atos’s proven Digital Decarbonization Assessment methodology to assess the healthcare company’s current decarbonization maturity, ambitions and any gaps that must be addressed in order to meet its decarbonization targets. Crucially, the assessment incorporated emissions for Scope 1 (assets and staff), Scope 2 (energy consumption) and Scope 3 (supply chain).

Using qualitative and quantitative measures, the Atos Digital Decarbonization Assessment covered nine key aspects of the IT spectrum with the potential to reduce emissions (including data management, software, solutions, hardware and data centers) while also focusing on organizational strategy and the supply chain. The team’s assessment included devices, policies for use of IT, employee awareness and engagement, eco-design principles, configuration management, decommissioning policies, and procurement policies and processes.

Focusing and accelerating decarbonization progress

It is important to break down any organization’s decarbonization journey into manageable phases, so Atos created a high-level carbon reduction roadmap, and a phased plan to achieve the necessary decarbonization maturity levels. They identified key activities and priority recommendations for each of the assessment domains, including dependencies and guidance on how the healthcare company can progressively increase its maturity levels to the desired state.

Roadmap to a low-carbon future

As a result of the project, the company’s internal stakeholders have greater awareness and understanding of the challenges and opportunities that decarbonization presents. They also benefit from clearer roles, responsibilities and clear ownership by sustainability leaders and employees. Its people are more empowered, with information and insight into how to lower carbon emissions and increase energy efficiency.

The organization now has a concise roadmap and practical plans for decarbonization, which provide:

• Clarity on IT’s contributions to the organization’s carbon emissions
• Insights into strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats around sustainability
• Phased carbon reduction activities
• Policies and strategies to ensure that the carbon footprint shrinks, even as the business evolves and grows
• A cost model showing required investments, plus associated benefits of decarbonization – including cost savings, and enhanced employee engagement and retention based on clearer sustainability ambitions and strategy

Atos is now working with the organization to implement the first phase of its carbon reduction roadmap.

Why Atos

Atos is a global leader in decarbonization, with an environmental program and climate leadership that have been recognized year after year by international organizations such as the CDP, the Dow Jones Sustainability Index and the SEAL Sustainability Awards. With decades of experience as a trusted partner to healthcare organizations, we can work with you and your stakeholders to help decarbonize your IT, operations and supply chain.

Whether you are starting from scratch or already have an established program, contact us to discuss how we can advance your decarbonization ambitions.