After a couple of false starts I was delighted to take delivery of a Volkswagen ID.3 electric car a few months ago.
I've been acutely aware of the impact that I.T. has on global warming for many years and have always looked for ways to minimise our contribution. The move to cloud has, on the whole, helped reduce emissions and each new generation of processors consumes less power than the previous one so new kit tends to reduce emissions on a like for like basis so our business model should be making a positive impact to global warming.
But the enormous amount of electrical waste generated by the industry doesn't get the attention it deserves and as a society we ought to be having a conversation about the billions of images taken every year that are stored and never looked at. Each photograph taken, each snapchat, each TikTok, each reel consumes energy and is warming the planet but none of us feel the impact of that as it appears to be free at the point of use. Little that Thompson Consultants Ltd can do against the like of TikTok although we actively try and recycle good kit to local charities.
Anyway, back to the car. I travel between client sites, often in urban areas, and spend too much time sat in traffic so with the ID.3 I now travel in silence and am not contributing to that urban pollution. We have a 100% green electric provider at home so hopefully I've reduced the businesses carbon impact by around 3 tonnes of CO2 a year.
I'm perfectly aware that electric cars have their own problems with a potentially short lifecycle and the embedded emissions in the manufacture but on the whole it seems like progress to not be burning dinosaur juice to travel between sites.
Next step solar panels for the office!