With sustainability becoming ever more important, in August Lenovo launched
TruScale DaaS for Sustainability, a modular solution to help organisations reduce their
carbon footprint and help them shift to a circular economy.
For many businesses looking to reduce their carbon footprint, as well as reduce costs, the IT suite is a major factor. IT can take up large amounts of energy – especially since the advent of AI functions – as well as carbon with the churn of devices through a business, so finding ways to reduce it to stay in line with ESG goals is increasingly imperative.
To this end, in August Lenovo launched its TruScale DaaS for Sustainability, which is designed to cut device-related costs by up to 35%, without upfront capital.
TruScale DaaS for Sustainability is built on Lenovo’s already popular and successful TruScale DaaS platform.
“It’s a modular service that allows companies to hit different sustainability goals by bringing in different aspects of the service,” says James Pennington, Lenovo’s global sustainability services director.
“One aspect is a completely new service for us and something we’re going to continue to innovate on going forward, which is our carbon impact portal. This means customers get a full readout of the carbon impact of all their devices, including in the manufacturing, the use of devices, any certification is all in there in one place, which makes it easy for customers to report on their emissions and carbon footprint.
“Also, for the first time, we’re bringing in certified refurbished devices into a deal as well, which means a company can decide to have a percentage of refurbished devices as part of their TruScale fleet.”
Refurbished devices are those that are taken back from the field, then given a thorough service, including new parts, to bring it back to showroom standard. “As an OEM Lenovo bring in certified parts, we have a very high standard of refurbishment process and because of that, we really give that ‘as new’ experience, but with a refurbished device,” says James. “We also offer an OEM warranty – including on the battery – and all our other support services with these devices.
“Co₂ offsets are also available, which is something which we’ve had in the market for five years, and those are linked to the device serial number, and all the information on that is available in the carbon impact portal. Companies can see how CO₂ offsets and carbon credits are being used to compensate for the emissions that are produced in the production and use of the devices.”
James adds there are also asset recovery services at the end of life. “We have a brand agnostic asset recovery service,” he adds. “Lenovo has 15 years of experience around that, with more than a million devices retired over that time.”
Wide aim
TruScale DaaS for Sustainability is aimed at businesses of all sizes and across all sectors, James adds. “For example, a leading UK university was able to offset 225 tonnes of CO₂, save 40 hours of IT labour each week, and improve their device delivery with Truscale DaaS for Sustainability,” he says.
“We’re seeing uptake from across the market now. We have some very large enterprises that use our service offering, but also SMBs where CapEx can be difficult to access.”
TruScale DaaS for Sustainability is an OpEx model and subscription-based. “It’s easy to add in refurbished devices, offsets or carbon reporting,” says James. “You can make a first step very easily. For instance, if a company has a target by 2030 to have 20% of devices refurbished, you can start at 1% or 2%, and test it out, then work it up from there. We’ve worked with companies where we’ve done very small pilots to start with.
“With all of this, it’s about making it as easy as possible for the customer to be more sustainable. The key thing is being able to demonstrate the TCO and carbon reductions that they’re going to see, and give them the tools, which means they can report on their savings which they make as well. That’s the building blocks of what we’re doing here.”
Importance of carbon impact
James has an extensive background in environmental reporting, latterly with Lenovo, but previously also with Deloitte and the World Economic Forum and has seen first-hand how the importance of reporting carbon impact has grown over recent years. “We’re seeing reporting requirements globally becoming a more or less a universal requirement,” he says. “Whether that’s the big markets, like in Europe, where there’s the CSRD, which is a huge reporting obligation. But if you look at this year, there’s new rules that have come in place in Australia and the UAE. In January, there’ll be new rules in California around reporting and new rules across Latin America. In almost every market, we’re seeing these rules coming in around reporting carbon emissions.
“Basically, if you’re a company where your main business model is people with laptops and some data centre servers, IT is about 40% of your emissions footprint. Getting accurate data on what that footprint looks like and verified data you can use for reporting is important for our customers and we are making it as easy as possible for them to access.
“Going forward, that’s something we want to bring to all our customers because we see that demand.”
LISSA
As mentioned, data is an important part of this process to enable businesses to know the size of their emissions and where savings can be made. Lenovo has its AI-driven tool Lenovo Intelligent Sustainability Solutions Advisor (LISSA) to help with this.
“That uses a mix of carbon impact models and AI to work alongside our sellers to advise customers on what they can do in terms of their IT footprint which would reduce their carbon footprint going forward – which services they can bring in, which changes they can make,” explains James. “You need that data on what a customer is doing, then looping that back into our LISSA tool to calculate what savings can be made.”
Popularity
Part of the reason behind the launch of TruScale DaaS for Sustainability was that extending the life of devices and using refurbished devices are becoming more popular with businesses, James adds.
“Companies and consumers alike are interested in refurbished products,” he says. “And how you can get a high-quality product at a lower price point and make a big carbon saving at the same time.”
Cost savings are another focus for businesses, especially in the larger corporate market, James adds. “It must be cost-competitive, but they’re very interested in the carbon benefits as well as they look to get to net zero, especially companies where IT makes up a big proportion of their emissions, they’re looking to get to hit their 2030 targets. Research shows the biggest thing you can do in terms of highest impact is to extend device life and buy refurbished devices. They’re seeing that as a big opportunity to cut carbon as well as cut costs.”
Using refurbished devices is also popular with employees too, James adds. “Particularly if it’s helping a company to hit their sustainability goals,” he says. “Companies are also looking at personal devices – does everyone need the latest device or maybe a refurb makes more sense?”
As mentioned, James has worked in this sector for many years and has seen the narrative around sustainability change in that time. “Some years ago, sustainability was very much seen as a ‘nice to have’,” he says. “Since then, consumers have seen the value of refurbished products, and there has been a huge take up in that. In recent years, we’re now starting to see that translate into businesses as well.
“For some companies, 40% of their emissions are from IT, so for those trying to hit their emissions targets, this becomes an important consideration.
“There are regulations pushing for carbon reduction. It’s an imperative in terms of what’s happening globally and the challenges that we face. And it makes good business sense too as you can drive efficiency and drive down costs.”
Lenovo too remains on track to meet its own 2030 emissions goals. “We have large teams that are working towards making this happen,” says James. “We’re validated by the Science Based Targets Initiative and we were the first OEM to be validated by it. That’s all part of our net zero journey to get going towards 2050. We’re on track to hit those targets.”
Future
With the successful launch of TruScale DaaS for Sustainability, James is now focusing on the further development of it. “We see this reporting trend continuing to be important and want to continue to develop the carbon impact portal,” he adds. “Eventually, we want to bring that to all our customers. But for now, we’ll focus on making that available across TruScale DaaS for Sustainability and getting that into the hands of more of our customers.
“We will also continue to increase our device data quality. We will soon launch fully certified lifecycle assessments for all our Thinkpad range, and we’ll continue to build that data out as well. Also getting fully certified LCA across all our services to make sure that we have the very highest quality data that companies can use to report on. We will continue to enhance our LISSA tool as well, so that we can give better advice to our customers on this as well.”
As well as LISSA, Lenovo will also look to further harness the potential of AI – including using it to help to reduce emissions in the IT space. “Companies are getting to grips with AI and energy use and this is going to be a big area as data centres are using more energy – but it can also be used to find ways to bring emissions down too,” he says.
“Another area we’re looking at is whether we can do something similar to TruScale DaaS for Sustainability in our infrastructure as a service area as well, which will involve similar services and tools that help our customers to reduce their energy use and emissions in that space too.”
