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Driving a 79% Reduction in IT Carbon Emissions and 30% Energy Savings for a UK Tech Group

Client Background

A leading technology services and consulting group had already achieved EcoVadis Gold for sustainability excellence across its operating entities.

Seeking to strengthen its environmental impact, the company set out to quantify and reduce IT-related carbon emissions, energy costs, and e-waste.

To achieve this, the organisation partnered with KA2 Sustainability Consulting, using their award-winning COzPro Solution, which combines data analytics, lifecycle optimisation, and proven sustainability strategies.

The Challenge

The client’s IT infrastructure included a mix of data centre and workplace assets, some nearing end-of-life. To meet it’s commitment to Sustainable IT, the organisation needed a verified IT carbon baseline and a strategy to:

  • Reduce lifetime CO₂e (Scope 3) and operational (Scope 2) emissions
  • Optimise asset refresh and retirement cycles
  • Minimise cost and electronic waste through reuse and lifecycle extension

COzPro-Led Approach

KA2 worked with the client’s IT and sustainability teams over a two-year period to create a comprehensive carbon profile across all IT assets, from servers to laptops and peripherals, providing full visibility of embodied (Scope 3) and in-use (Scope 2) emissions.

Data Highlights:

  • 100% asset coverage in the carbon profiling process
  • 22% of models with verified Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs)
  • Strong baseline data quality in the IT Asset Management system

COzPro’s insights revealed opportunities to cut emissions and costs simultaneously by combining asset optimisation with smart repurposing of existing equipment.

Lifecycle Optimisation in Action

A key milestone was the retirement of legacy rackmount servers following Server 2012 End of Life.

Instead of investing in new data centre equipment or migrating to the cloud, the team, guided by COzPro’s best practice sustainable IT principles, chose to repurpose existing devices as backup servers.

What They Did

  • Retired legacy rackmount servers, which were extremely energy inefficient and required an air-cooled environment
  • Repurposed more energy-efficient redundant devices in the existing IT estate and built virtualised servers running Windows Server 2022
  • Increased the comms room temperature in line with the new servers’ cooling requirements, thereby reducing energy use

Why It Mattered

  • Extended the life of existing hardware, and avoided purchasing new devices and resulting e-waste
  • Reduced tech kWh consumption by 33% and associated operational costs by 30.1%
  • Maintained operational continuity with improved stability and modernised infrastructure

This real-world example shows how combining technical efficiency and lifecycle circularity can deliver immediate Scope 2 and Scope 3 reductions without compromising IT performance.

Addressing the Transparency Gap

As part of the company’s broader digital transformation, several workloads, including email and collaboration tools, transitioned from on-premise Microsoft Exchange to Microsoft 365.

While this change reduced on-site energy demand and infrastructure maintenance, it also exposed a growing industry challenge:

A lack of transparency from Cloud and SaaS providers around their own Scope 2 and Scope 3 emissions.

Currently, it is difficult to accurately compare the financial, Scope 2, and Scope 3 implications of on-premise versus cloud-based services due to inconsistent or incomplete data from hyperscalers and SaaS vendors.

KA2 recommended the organisation strengthen its Cloud and SaaS sustainability posture and:

  • Advocate for greater disclosure and standardisation of cloud carbon reporting
  • Promote supplier transparency across the digital value chain — both upstream (vendors) and downstream (clients)
  • Encourage clients to use their procurement influence to demand verified sustainability data from providers
  • Aim to ensure that the integrity of carbon accounting is maintained as more IT services move off-premise

Results and Impact

Between August 2023 – August 2025, KA2 used COzPro’s analytics software to drive transformational improvements across the IT estate to reduce carbon, cost and waste.

Key Project Achievement

Combining KA2’s strategic sustainability consulting with COzPro’s award-winning software and science-backed data, the organisation has:

  • Established a verified carbon and energy baseline and a reduction strategy
  • Built a repeatable, measurable model for Sustainable IT
  • Embedded sustainability into IT lifecycle management
  • Proven that circular IT strategies deliver tangible cost and carbon savings
  • Elevated the conversation around cloud transparency and value-chain accountability
  • The quantifiable outcomes to evidence its role as a sustainable partner within its customers’ supply chains.

Strategic Roadmap and Next Steps

KA2’s Phase 2 Roadmap focuses on continuous improvement with planned initiatives to:

  • Review opportunities to convert desktops to laptops and reduce monitor volumes
  • Reduce model diversity by 25% to cut support cost by ~10%
  • Reduce workgroup printers by 33%
  • Eliminate IP phones and transition to softphones
  • Continue to extend the asset retention period further through reuse/repurpose policy
  • Replace-on-failure rather than fixed refresh cycles
  • Introduce carbon avoidance metrics into environmental reporting
  • Prioritise manufacturers with verified EPDs and lower energy devices

 

Future Outcomes

 

Additional 23% CO₂e reduction 

5% reduction in IT operating costs 

Greater transparency and accountability across the digital value chain 

 

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“By combining asset lifecycle planning with COzPro’s data-driven insights, we were able to make practical, low-cost changes that dramatically cut both energy and emissions, proving that sustainable IT is also smart IT.”

Head of IT Infrastructure, Technology Services Group

“Without accurate, comparable Scope 2 and 3 data from cloud and SaaS providers, sustainability leaders can’t make informed decisions or maintain accountability across the value chain. This transparency gap is now one of the most critical frontiers in sustainable IT.”

KA2 Head of Sustainability and Innovation

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