SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) and BT  today announce a visionary new partnership to show how carbon accounting could be standardised for business customers by piloting the recently launched SAP Sustainability Data Exchange (SDX).

SAP SDX enables BT to collect, trace and share carbon data across its own supplier base, providing unparalleled visibility into the carbon footprint of its business products and services. BT can then share this information directly with customers when they purchase products through SAP Business Network. Furthermore, BT can complement this with data-driven insights from its Digital Carbon Calculator and Carbon Network Dashboard to help customers optimise their own IT for both carbon and energy.

Key to the decision to select SAP SDX was its adherence to the carbon data interoperability standards set by the Partnership for Carbon Transparency (PACT), hosted by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD). This means that global and UK business customers do not have to implement their own carbon accounting platforms to calculate, collate and share emissions data. Instead, they simply request it through SAP SDX for their BT products and services.

BT is sending a strong signal of intent to standardise sustainability reporting  across global business customers' value chains to help them tackle Scope 3 emissions and drive environmental progress. This will also contribute to the delivery of the BT Group Manifesto pledge to help customers avoid 60 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions by 2030. 

Sarwar Khan, global head of digital sustainability, Business, BT, said: “Typically, value chain emissions represent a greater proportion of a business’ carbon footprint than operational emissions. Tracking, measuring and acting on these and bringing more suppliers and partners on the journey will not just accelerate net-zero targets, but set a new precedent for sustainability reporting. Collaboration fuels progress and access to data is fundamental to getting it right.”

“The lack of standardisation in sustainability reporting has been a roadblock to progress for too long,” commented Ryan Poggi, managing director of SAP UKI. “This creates confusion and an inability to validate real change. Our partnership with BT gives us an opportunity to refresh the guidelines and offers a blueprint for a universal standard in sustainability reporting. The aim is to create an environment for organisations to transparently tackle global challenges together.”

SAP SDX merges granular and accurate carbon data with financial transactions on the SAP Green Ledger. It provides businesses with unmatched insights into their environmental footprint and standardises how to communicate learnings and action across value chains. In adopting SAP SDX, BT can request product-level carbon data from key suppliers for its business customer services, support smaller partners to calculate their carbon footprint and securely share and standardise this information across its value chain. To build scale, BT is working with key partner Cisco to deploy SDX to receive product carbon data for core network devices, simplify and secure data exchange with business customers backed by its global connectivity services, and boost traceability.

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About SAP

SAP’s strategy is to help every business run as an intelligent enterprise. As a market leader in enterprise application software, we help companies of all sizes and in all industries run at their best: SAP customers generate 87% of total global commerce. Our machine learning, Internet of Things (IoT), and advanced analytics technologies help turn customers’ businesses into intelligent enterprises. SAP helps give people and organizations deep business insight and fosters collaboration that helps them stay ahead of their competition. We simplify technology for companies so they can consume our software the way they want – without disruption. Our end-to-end suite of applications and services enables business and public customers across 25 industries globally to operate profitably, adapt continuously, and make a difference. With a global network of customers, partners, employees, and thought leaders, SAP helps the world run better and improve people’s lives. For more information, visit www.sap.com.  

BT today announced an expansion of its digital sustainability tools to help customers monitor and optimise energy use across their full IT estate, from the network to servers running their apps and workloads in data centres and elsewhere.

The company is integrating data on servers’ energy use into its AI-powered sustainability tools. It means BT’s digital dashboards can now offer a single, end-to-end picture of how much energy customers’ IT infrastructure is using and present actionable insights on what to do to optimise devices, apps and workloads to help meet their net zero goals. BT then offers to help deliver this as part of its sustainable network design and refresh service. 

For example, the dashboard can look at network traffic over a 24-hour period and processor telemetry to identify opportunities for server devices to be placed into deep sleep depending on the way the workloads and apps are run.

Globally, data centres and associated networks that underpin digitalisation account for 0.9 per cent of energy-related greenhouse gas emissions. The EU has already introduced new policies and regulations for reducing energy use and decarbonising data centres. Organisations will be required to demonstrate their data centres meet the EU’s Assessment Framework for Data Centres as part of the upcoming Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), which will impact up to 50,000 companies.

BT continues to evolve its digital sustainability tools to help organisations meet these challenges. The tools already help customers monitor and benchmark energy consumption of their network devices in internet of things (IoT) operational environments such as factories and ports; local area networks (LANs) that provide connectivity within offices; and wide area networks (WANs) that link sites globally.

They are the latest step in the delivery of a BT Group Manifesto pledge to help customers avoid 60 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions by 2030.

Sarwar Khan, head of digital sustainability, Business, BT Group, said: “More and more customers are setting science-based net zero targets and face increasing regulatory pressures to improve efficiency in their data centres. By integrating data from leading IT vendor partners such as Cisco and INTEL, we’re giving customers end-to-end visibility of energy use across their full IT estate as well as the insight and support needed to optimise devices and workloads.”

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About BT’s digital sustainability tools

BT’s Carbon Network Dashboard gives a real-time view of power consumption across the network and datacentres. It uses AI and machine learning to detect and predict anomalies based on historic usage. This includes which network devices are consuming the most power. Customers can also forecast total energy use based on their network inventory and historic utilisation.

To help understand how electricity consumption translates into carbon emissions, the Dashboard includes data from regional power grids showing their carbon intensity.

The Digital Carbon Calculator helps customers estimate their network and data centre’s carbon footprint. It scans the customer’s network and data centre inventory to estimate their carbon footprint and can track how this responds to changes and upgrades over time. It includes lifecycle management, highlighting devices at the end of service to prioritise for replacement. Customers can also choose to use the calculator by uploading an inventory of their IT infrastructure equipment for analysis.