Digital Sustainability (full report)

Role: Author

Summary
This report is an introduction to digital sustainability and a net-positive approach.

Digital sustainability is the means by which digitalisation,
as a key part of the fourth industrial revolution, can deliver on
the global sustainability goals. In this report, when we refer to ICT solutions, we mean any solution that is enabled by digitalisation: not only classical ICT solutions such as teleworking, but also many of the new innovative solutions, including most new business models based on services rather than products, as these require ICT systems.

In a net-positive approach, the focus is on how an organisation can provide the sustainable solutions that are needed in various different parts of society, beyond its own operation. This differs from a traditional sustainability perspective, in which the focus is on philanthropy and the
organisation’s negative impacts over its life cycle.

Link to full report 

Digital Sustainability (abridged version)

Role: Author

Summary
This is an introduction to digital sustainability and a net-positive approach for companies, as well as an overview of how Cybercom is working with clients to deliver sustainable solutions. Net positive is an approach in which the focus is on how a company, primarily through its goods and services, can provide the sustainable solutions that are needed in various parts of society. This differs from a traditional sustainably perspective, which tends to consider only the company’s negative impacts over the lifecycle.

Link to the abridged version

From green savings to green profit: Moving towards a 21st century green business model (Article in Economy China)

Role: author

Comment
As I saw how the old CSR perspective from the west undermined interesting work in China I spent some time trying to explain that the reactive/ 0-approach tended to take the company into a dead-end where they did not focus on what society needed, but how they could communicate a zero-impact (often though offsetting). if they wanted to use sustinability as a driver for innovation they needed to take another path. 

Summary
The last years leading companies around the world have begun to shift focus. From only working on their internal environmental problems, they now focus on how they can help provide the solutions the world needs and how their business models can change from a focus on products to the services needed in society.

The reason behind this change is that incremental improvements are not enough, new markets are growing, smart solutions are ready at the same time as we understand the need for transformative solutions. The 21st century company must focus on new green business models that deliver sustainable services and have CEO’s that take the lead.

Link to full article

迈向二十一世纪的绿色商业模式 从专注节能环保到寻求绿色利润 (Article in Economy China)

Role: author

Summary: 

过去的几年，世界各地领先企业的关注 点都在悄然地发生着变化。不同于过去只关 注内部的环境问题，当今的企业正在专注于 如何提供符合世界市场需求的解决方案，以 及企业自身的商业模式如何从关注产品转变 为关注于社会所需要的服务。

产生如此变化是基于以下几点原因:其 一、原有改善速度过慢;其二、新市场的不 断增长;其三、智能解决方案已准备就绪; 以及我们理解了对变革性解决方案的需求。 21世纪的企业必须着眼于可提供可持续服务 的新型绿色商业模式，而且其领导者必须起 到引领作用。

Link to full article

Transformative Step of the Day during COP-17 (competition)

Role: Project coordinator

Summary
At COP17 in Durban, the Transformative Step of the Day initiative was launched in conjunction with the global climate negotiations to increase focus on transformative low-carbon solutions and how they can be supported in the process.

The purpose is to facilitate dialogue between policymakers and solution providers on how transformative solutions can be promoted in the climate negotiations and beyond.

This will support the goal that transformative low-carbon solutions are recognized in relevant parts of the climate negotiations, and that initiatives accelerating their uptake are recognized.

Government leaders and solution sectors will present concrete examples of transformative low-carbon solutions from around the world directly to the negotiators in order to demonstrate the need to support their accelerated uptake.

Short video from Christiana Figueres welcoming transformative step of the day

Short video from Georg Kell welcoming transformative step of the day

Short video from Achim Steiner welcoming transformative step of the day

Download leaflet

Transformative Calculations: Calculating the impacts of transformative low-carbon solutions (Report)

Role: Lead author

Summary: 
This paper provides a brief overview of the possibilities for calculating and reporting a company’s positive contributions to societal emissions reductions.

Over the last few years, discussions and strategies have shifted from an exclusive focus on big emitters and the need to reduce emissions by improving existing systems, to also focus on providers of low-carbon solutions and transformative change whereby services are provided in totally new ways (such as modal shifts and dematerialization).

As a consequence the need for new reporting that can capture contributions from companies that provide solutions has emerged. The terminology is still under development, and the concepts are working names that have been used in the discussion related to the GHG-protocol and other systems for calculating emission reductions:

Total emissions approach: A focus on the total impact, both posi- tive and negative

Climate Positive: A company that helps reduce more emissions in society than it emits over the whole value chain, Scope 1-3

Low-carbon market opportunities: The emissions that a company can contribute to reducing in society through the use of the products/ services and that are outside Scope 1-3

Link to report

IT and sustainable development: Swedish Government established a Forum for IT and environmental issues (Report)

Role: co-author with Ewa Thorslund

Summary
In 2001, the Swedish Government established a Forum for IT and environmental issues with a mandate lasting until December 2003. The Forum’s purpose was to provide a natural platform for information and communication technology (ICT) and ecologically sustainable development. The Forum is run by a work group comprising representatives of the industrial and research sectors, the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency (Naturvårdsverket), ministries and environmental organisations.

The Swedish Environment Minister, Lena Sommestad, was appointed Chairperson of the Forum. The Forum’s aim was to analyse how increased use can be made of IT applications to promote sustainable development, and how various actors can be encouraged to contribute to this goal. The group’s mandate included studying ways in which IT use can contribute to the development of new infrastructures and products and services with lower resource consumption and environmental impact. The Environmental Protection Agency was responsible for the Forum’s secretariat. The present document was written by Dennis Pamlin and Ewa Thorslund within the framework of the Forum.

Link to report

GRI Telecommunications Sector Supplement (Paper)

Role: co-author with Sean Gilbert, Michael Kuhndt, Edoardo Gai, Dunstan Hope, Danilo Riva, Chris Tuppen, et.al

Comment
This was the first time "net-positive"/ "climate positive" effects of ICT was included in an international framework I think. Even 15 years later it is ahead of the GHG-protocol, CDP and others that dominate how companies should report (as they stick to only the "reduction" perspective). This is about to change, but as of 2017 the focus is still 99% on the reductions and not how companies can deliver what is needed. 

Summary
GRI is pleased to release the pilot version of the Telecommunications Sector Supplement for use in conjunction with the GRI 2002 Sustainability Reporting Guidelines (‘the Guidelines).

In 2001,GRI launched its supplement programme in response to consistent feedback on the importance of sector-specific guidelines built on the foundation of the Guidelines. GRI supplements capture issues essential to sustainability reporting in a specific sector, but which may not appear in the Guidelines since they are relevant primarily for a specific range of reporting organisations or sectors. By developing both the Guidelines and sectoral supplements, the GRI framework supports the comparison of reporting organisations both across within and across sectors.

Link to paper

Sustainability at the Speed of Light (Book)

Role: author/editor

Comment
After the climate meeting in Kyoto and assessing other sustainability trends it became clear that more than incremental improvements are needed.  The technology and sector that I thought was best positioned to deliver this sustainable disruption was the ICT sector.

After a few years of trying to get governments, companies (outside the ICT sector) and NGOs to understand the potential of digitalisation without much success I decided to put the ideas together in a book to make a very complicated issue easier to access. It was interesting as most people agreed that it was important, but very few felt they could do anything. So the five years after the book I focused on integrating an ICT aspect in all strategies and processes that I thought were important. There are many interesting stories around the process, and I learned a lot about how different people approach change and new ideas.  

First two sentences
For the past few years, information technology and the so-called new economy have been intensely discussed. Many different views exist, but there is no doubt that over the next couple of years information and communication technologies (ICT) will come to affect and reshape most parts of our society. Whether we like it or not, ICT will radically influence transport patterns, energy consumption, overall resource usage and, to an unknown degree, our culture and even the way we perceive the world, our relationship to it, and our actions as dictated by these new mores.

Although ICT will have an enormous effect on tomorrow’s society, surprisingly little research has been conducted regarding its future environmental consequences. Most of the work that has been done has reached one of two conclusions: either ICT will bring only good things, from solutions to world hunger and the elimination of all transportation problems to a revitalised democracy; or ICT will bring nothing but problems, accelerating resource consumption, introducing new toxic materials and resulting in greater inequity by introducing a digital divide that will worsen the already unequal distribution of wealth and influence.

The first challenge, if we want to tackle the challenges surrounding ICT for the future, is to go beyond this polarised perspective.

Link to the book in PDF