How SaaS could lead to a strong ecological transition #Saas4Climate

As Internet users we litterally have the GAFAM or BATX (or any internet service provider) in the palm of our hands : our smartphone and our credit card. I think we could push them toward a strong ecological transition with those pieces of plastic and silicium.

Disclaimer : as a French citizen, most of the examples I give to illustrate my thoughts come from France.

Awareness

With the inscreasing political awareness on climate change (Biden rejoining the Paris Climat Agreements, the french “Convention Citoyenne pour le Climat”, etc) and in the same time all the new digital innovation incoming (SaaS, VR, AR, IA, IoT, 5G, etc) the carbon footprint of such services is slowly inflitrating the corporate marketing strategies. Apple removed the charger from the iPhone package, for example.

Just like the quality of our food (veganism, GMO, the Yuka app, …), or the workers conditions in the production of our day to day food (local first, protectionnism, the “Who’s the boss?” french company, …), or the planned obscolescence of our devices… What if the energy consumption of the online services we use would become a new important criteria in our consumer decision to buy ?

Or even an element of guilt such as the “flygskam” this swedish feeling of shame associated to air travel ?

Marketing strategy

We could easily imagine that Netflix, Spotify, or any online subscription would indicate on our bill the carbon footprint of the movies we watched or the music we listened to. Or this could be on our Internet providers bill ! We could use a carbon notation, a carbon score anyone could easily understand. For exemple the app Karbon reports the carbon footprint of our food into the distance a car would have driven.

But we could see one step further : our bank account could display the carbon notation of our complete consumption.

Some cloud computing companies, like OVH, provide an API allowing their customers (the SaaS) to measure the carbon footprint of the mail, movies, or any content they provide.

I think such initiatives will come from “small” cloud computing companies, those with small enough server farms. They will use this feature as commercial advantage to attract customers with ecological values. This customer minority will provide its users with the same values what are their carbon footprint of the products and services they buy.

The big cloud computing companies will feel this tendancy grow. At first reluctant by lack of return on investment, they’ll grant their product footprint when their customers become more demanding. This feature will be another strategic choice to win more market share against slower competitors. And like every trend, it will turn into a race. Do you remember 5 years ago, when Netflix was the only real SVOD provider ? Now we have Amazon Prime, Disney+, Apple+, HBO Max… In France we even have our own : Salto. Today every one of them invest dozens of millions to produce content. So the interest in online service carbon footprint will spread like wildfire !

It will weigh more an more in our everyday life. Maybe, by opportunism, politics will appropriate this cause and write some law about it, as a trophy to exhibit during a campaign to win an election.

Upcycling

But once every line of our software source code will be optimized, which is cheap, once every energy consumer server will be replaced by sober ones in the farms, where could the next optimization come from ?

Maybe the model of a server farm itself is to be changed. Maybe the heat generated by those cloud computing complex can be used to heat residential buildings or public swimming pools. In Paris, some places are heated thanks to the subway ! Another brilliant initiative come from this french startup Qarnot that wants to replace your personal house heaters by servers ! There is already a lot of initiatives that are so little known.

What if…

Is it still possible to reduce our carbon footprint by adopting personal responsible habits ?

I think yes. Not only by private ones like sorting our waste, but thanks to our most lethal weapon : our credit card ! The COVID situation and lots of recent other ones have shown how the consumers have power upon titans we thought were unbreakable : the exode from WhatsApp to Signal, the Cyberpunk 2077 bad buzz, Sony’s Sonic movie refactor, the Gamestop WallStreetBets recent situation…

The weak signals are getting louder ! They start to bother the greatest world companies shareholders. Not because of a sudden overnight ecological awareness but because of the fear their corporate reputation would suffer a disgrace from a scandal in the public eyes, that could lead to a stock market crash.

One of the most famous french humorist once said :

When you think that all it takes is for people to stop buying it for it to stop being sold…

Replacing gross domestic product (GDP) by the carbon footprint to measure a country health may not be so utopian after all !

2020 has shown us how society can quickly change and adapt. Who would have thought last january where we would be just one year later ?

So what if ?