Next year will be about reducing the carbon footprint in the field of corporate technologies

Among the world’s top 400 large companies, the number of those that actually spend to reduce their carbon footprint has doubled in recent years, but there is still a lot of apparent measures (greenwashing) – and this is especially true for technology, which we often don’t even think about, how much of a burden it places on our environment.

Many people think of digitization as the savior of the planet, and of course there are many tools and applications available that really contribute to reducing environmental impact or energy consumption, but the other side of the coin is less talked about. On average, we write 347 billion emails per day, each of which burdens the environment with a carbon footprint of approximately 0.3 grams, in the case of a Zoom conference call this is already 2 grams. And one of the “most polluting” technologies is the superstar of the future, artificial intelligence. Training a generative AI model rivals the emissions of a round-the-world flight, and a short conversation with our machine friend uses roughly half a liter of fresh water.