Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo has launched specific projects to improve the environmental sustainability of its digital tools.
The digitalisation of work processes is an important path to follow to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But no action has zero impact and even digital tools generate CO2 equivalent emissions as they require electricity to operate. This is why it is important to measure and reduce the energy needs of the digital tools used by the Foundation.
The project started with the website of Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo.
The first stage involved taking measurements: the weight of the data flow transferred in a year from the server to the devices of users browsing the site was calculated. This also made it possible to calculate how much electricity was used and therefore how much CO2 equivalent was emitted to generate the electricity.
Before the improvement work, the website of Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo was generating CO2 equivalent emissions equal to those of a petrol car travelling 7 times the distance between Turin and the North Pole.
The website therefore underwent a profound overhaul in terms of technology and content. The aim was to reduce the number of pages and their weight, working on browsing paths and multimedia files. The result was a tool that was lighter on the environment and the people browsing the website.
As a result of the improvement work, the website has reduced its environmental impact by 30%. Work to further reduce greenhouse gas emissions continues, because sustainability is a process, not a goal.
