Upstream Impacts
This category is about understanding and assessing the supply chain of an organisation’s digital estate. Upstream impacts (Category U) refer to the impacts of the development and distribution of installed software used by the organisation, embodied impacts of hardware purchased by an organisation and the content and data the organisation holds and uses.
Through this understanding strategies to reduce the impact of materials and processes, development of sustainable procurement practices and circular economy principles can be applied.
Upstream impacts relate to GHG Protocol Scope 3.
Software
Impacts associated with developing and delivering off-the-shelf and open-source software installed on the organisation’s systems. The impacts of training AI models fall into this category. Includes impacts related to:
- Resources consumed and hardware used during programming, testing and releasing new software versions.
- Packaging and digital distribution of software over the internet.
- Product support services for troubleshooting and guiding customers.
Hardware
Embodied impacts associated with hardware devices owned by an organisation, including those arising from the manufacture, transportation, installation, maintenance, and end-of-life of a device. Data sheets from manufacturers are quite common and can be helpful.
There are three sub-categories to consider:
- Employee hardware
- Networking hardware
- Data centre and server hardware
Employee Hardware
The embodied impacts from laptops, desktops, mobiles, printers, and peripherals used by employees.
Networking Hardware
When considering the upstream impacts of a network, consider the embodied impacts of any networking devices that are owned by the organisation. These include, but are not limited to:
- Routers
- Switches
- Bridges
- Wi-Fi access points
- Firewalls
- Modems
- Hubs
- Repeaters
- Cables
Servers and Storage hardware
Servers, storage systems, and data centre infrastructure installed on-premise. This assumes that the organisation has purchased this hardware directly.
Content and Data
The impacts from producing text, image, audio or video used as a commodity by the organisation, covering:
- Content production: resources used to produce content, including pre-production (such as research and planning), filming, recording and editing involved.
- Processing: data processing and AI/ML workflows, if content is algorithmically recommended, auto-captioned or translated for example.
- Storage: resources required for storing content and data.
- Distribution: digital distribution of content over the internet, network infrastructure such as content delivery networks (CDNs).
- Archiving: energy used to migrate, compress, and maintain historical content and datasets in your organisation.
Next: Operational Impacts