How charities can use digital to fight climate change

What is the true cost of digital transformation? Yes, hiring digital staff and bringing in agencies and freelancers is an investment. But what is the impact of your transformation on the planet?

According to the International Panel on Climate Change, devices, data centers, and IT networks account for 6–12% of global energy use. Digital technologies generate 1.4–4 % of global emissions, similar to the airline industry.

And the growth of artificial intelligence (AI) led leaders at COP28 to debate its role in data centre energy consumption, with the National Grid predicting that this will rise to just under 6% of UK electricity by 2030.

As our charities use digital more, and adopt AI further, the impact on the planet could be significant. We really want to understand where charities are at with using digital to tackle climate change, so we are gathering data about this as part of the survey to build the 2024 Charity Digital Skills Report. We want to hear from more charities about these issues so we can make the case to funders and decision-makers about the support the sector needs.

Fighting climate change is a huge task, and charities should not have to go it alone. I asked two social sector organisations about their advice for charities.

Show your charity the data

Right now, many organisations are likely to be unaware of the impact that everything they do digitally has on the planet. Beth Maguire, Digital Content and Web Manager at C40, a global network of nearly 100 mayors of the world’s leading cities that are united in confronting the climate crisis, feels that we need to acknowledge how close to home this issue is: “We’re far removed from the generators and clouds that allow us to access the internet, store data, build websites, and create and share content on social, but there is a real-world impact. Internet use accounts for 3.7% of global greenhouse emissions – equivalent to all global air traffic.“

Hayley Brace, Marketing Director at Pixeled Eggs, a Wordpress agency and BCorp who work with charities and focus on purpose driven digital, is concerned that digital’s carbon footprint isn’t widely understood. “Moving to digital can be seen as having a lower carbon footprint than traditional activities. However, it’s important to understand that digital is not as clean as you might think.,” she explains. “The internet produces 1 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions per year, this is already double what it was 10 years ago. As charities and organisations switch to digital to improve performance and efficiency, combined with increased use of compute resources and power through the adoption of AI, this rate of emissions will only continue to rise.”

Understand the actions you can take

The good news is that there are several ways you can use digital to fight climate change. At C40, Maguire and her team are committed to running a low carbon website: “Things like SEO, efficient copywriting, reducing multimedia use and compressing files where needed, and other best practice tactics that many social sector organisations are likely already employing. If you don’t know where to start, Website Carbon Calculator can indicate how your organisation is doing right now.”

In addition, C40’s IT teams encourage staff to clean out emails and files, so they don’t use unnecessary storage space.

The team at Pixeled Eggs helped their client The Earthshot Prize to follow similar principles when developing their website. Brace explains: “We used green-hosting provider Kinsta to ensure a renewable energy source was used server-side. Additionally, we implemented measures to design the site in a lean and sustainable way, reducing storage and digital resource requirements further.”

Brace also encourages charities to think about the data centres they use. “One of the quickest and biggest changes a charity can make is to choose a company that uses renewable energy, is efficiently built from the ground up and has good carbon offsetting schemes.”

Maguire and Brace’s advice shows that there are tangible, practical steps your charity can start taking today.

What else can your charity do?

World leaders reached a new deal on climate change at COP28 in December 2023, but there is still a long way for all countries, including the UK, to go to keep global temperature rises below 1.5 degrees.

Whilst reaching this target isn’t just down to charities, our sector has many strengths which can help combat climate change. Brace points to collaborative initiatives being undertaken by charities to raise awareness of climate change, including the Integrating Grasslands and Savannahs into National Biodiversity and Climate Commitments to Vote for Nature 2030 campaign and the State of the Nature Report. She told me that, “The sector has the opportunity to influence and change the status quo. For example, influencing government policies, leading the general public to take action, and demanding that their suppliers follow sustainable practices.”

Charities and social sector organisations have a voice when it comes to climate change, and shouldn’t be afraid to use it. Another way they can do this is through their campaigns. In 2023 C40 launched their good, green jobs campaign, which focuses on C40 mayors’ commitment to help foster the creation of 50 million sustainable jobs by 2030.

Social sector organisations operating in the climate space are well positioned to create lasting impact through their campaigns. Vishnee Sauntoo, C40’s Director of Brand, Creative and Digital Content advises charities to, “use an emotional connection to your audience maybe through video will motivate people to take action and to also see the impact and benefits of tackling climate change”.

Digital transformation is ultimately a people-first, not digital-first endeavour, and so is climate change. The power lies in all of our hands and the way we use our devices. If our sector can come together to fight climate change we could make a huge difference – and digital needs to be one of our weapons of choice.