Dive Brief:
- Digital Realty has selected IBM’s sustainability software to collate, analyze and report on its portfolio’s environmental, social and governance performance.
- The Envizi ESG Suite is a centralized SaaS platform aimed at providing data and analytics software to collect, manage and interpret insights from ESG data.
- Digital Realty said Envizi will support its endeavor to meet sustainability objectives by identifying areas of improvement, reporting performance to stakeholders and accommodating disclosure requirements.
Dive Insight:
Digital Realty provides cloud, colocation and interconnection services for major metro areas, including New York, Chicago and Northern Virginia. The company cited a commitment to transparent ESG disclosures and annual performance reports, including progress on its target to cut 68% of scope 1 and 2 emissions and 24% of scope 3 emissions by 2030.
Organizations are grappling with an overwhelming volume of ESG-related data stemming from factory floor sensors and other operational aspects, but much of that information is “often segregated within different databases, spreadsheets, and business units,” Christina Shim, vice president and global head of product management and strategy at IBM Sustainability Software, noted in the company release.
Effective use of ESG data is viewed as a way to drive profitability and growth. Organizations with strong ESG data capabilities are 43% more likely to outperform their counterparts on profitability, according to a survey conducted by IBM Institute for Business Value, involving 2,500 executives across 22 industries.
The survey findings, released in IBM’s ESG Data Conundrum report, show that although 95% of organizations have developed operational ESG propositions, 73% said they wrestle with an overload of manual data, and only 10% have achieved significant progress toward their goals.
The company said Envizi’s interface, which fields questions and responses on a single software platform, will help streamline these reporting processes as well as data on renewable energy certificates, utility bill analytics, power usage efficiency, waste disposal, business travel and purchased products and services. The intent is to facilitate a greater degree of consistency in data for reporting, analysis and decision-making around sustainability components like calculating scope 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas emissions and producing an annual ESG report.
Envizi’s analytical capabilities are also expected to help Digital Realty implement changes to its focus areas of designing and building more sustainable data centers, finding new ways to power those centers and improving how they are operated.
The ESG suite is expected to be implemented across a portfolio of over 300 data centers, across more than 50 metro areas in 27 countries.
Sanjay Rishi, who leads JLL’s Americas Work Dynamics business, pointed to an emergence of opportunities for facilities management professionals, ranging from technology integration to a growing focus on sustainability and energy efficiency.
“By utilizing data analytics, facilities managers can continuously refine and improve the workspace. By staying abreast of emerging technologies, facilities management professionals can … contribute to organizational success,” he told Facilities Dive.
Rishi added that facilities leads have good leeway to “explore innovative tools” for energy monitoring, communication systems and other sustainability measures. “They can implement green building practices, optimize energy consumption and adopt renewable energy sources,” he said. “By incorporating sustainable initiatives into … operations, facilities managers can contribute to environmental conservation and cost savings.”
