Abstract

We, Muleine Su Lim, David Ekchajzer, Laurent Eskenazi, Eric Fourboul and Benoit Petit, bring together our expertise in favor of the assessment and reduction of the environmental impacts of digital technology in organizations (services, infrastructures and digital activities).

Together, we offer a three-part offer based on open-source software, support and research and development. This offer allows us to support organizations, from awareness raising, through diagnosis, to impacts monitoring.

Hubblo cultivates its uniqueness through the automation of key processes, the transparency of its methods, data and tools, as well as through its perpetual quest for expertise.

In the meantime, please feel free to spread the word!

Hubblo is growing

The environment continues to deteriorate, it is necessary to act.

Since the creation of Hubblo at the beginning of 2020, the conditions of viability on earth have deteriorated. To stay below +1.5°C of global warming, it is necessary to contain the global curve of greenhouse gas emissions as quickly as possible.

Unfortunately, climate change is not the only issue that the human species must face. Indeed, we have recently exceeded two other planetary limits: the freshwater cycle and the chemical pollution. In addition, to meet the growing demand in terms of digital and energy, the extraction of abiotic fossil and mineral resources is intensifying. Thus, increasing pollutions of water, soil and air in the extraction areas, with disastrous consequences on the health and living conditions of local workers and inhabitants.

To trigger a change, organizations need to understand their impacts and take appropriate transformation measures.

To reduce our pressure on the environment, the joint commitment of institutions, businesses and citizens is essential. Since its creation, Hubblo has believed in the need to transform organizations to make them participate in the reduction of these pressures and align their activities with planetary boundaries.

In all sectors, awareness on this specific topic is progressing. However, the understanding of the orders of magnitude and the different impacts of our activities on the environment, the economy and human health is still very partial. This is particularly the case for the impacts induced by the digital economy.

In the digital domain, this understanding is currently limited.

With the complexity, outsourcing and pervasivity of information systems, measuring the impact of digital services is often a costly, time-consuming and approximate process. The “GreenIT” sector is still young. As such, neither in the industry nor in the academic world, there are consensual standards appliable to take into account its impacts.

Since its creation, Hubblo has worked to remove these obstacles, and support organizations in their understanding and management of their impacts. Scaphandre was the first manifestation of this desire. Beyond this first initiative, several meetings and collaborations have shown that the value of our interventions comes from solid support based on open methodologies, data, and software, as close as possible to the scientific state of knowledge.

We are now combining our skills to build a complete offer for organizations.

For these reasons, Hubblo is growing. We, Muleine Lim, David Ekchajzer, Laurent Eskenazi, Eric Fourboul and Benoit Petit, bring together our expertise to assess and reduce the environmental impacts of digital technology in organizations (services, infrastructures and digital activities).

Together, we offer a three-part offer based on open-source software, support and research and development. This offer allows us to support organizations, from awareness raising, through diagnosis, to impacts monitoring.

Hubblo cultivates its uniqueness through the automation of key processes, the transparency of its methods, data and tools, as well as through its perpetual quest for expertise.

We are inspired by standardized evaluation methods such as Life Cycle Assessment. Besides, we design our tools in accordance with our convictions - open-source being key for a reliable, open to criticism and improvable environmental evaluation.

Analysis / management, awareness, transformation, anticipation

In detail, this offer consists of three components:

• Open-source software : The management of the digital environmental footprint of organizations involves the automation and recurrence of environmental assessment. Thanks to the software we develop, the measurement approach can be integrated into the processes of an organization to achieve a high level of monitoring. This is the case with Scaphandre for monitoring the final energy consumption of a server and the applications it hosts, or with Cabestan which will automate the inventory phase of equipment, services and digital assets. The collection of this data could also feed an observatory of the digital impacts of organizations, which will notably allow sectoral analyzes (project to come).

• Support : We make employees and CIOs aware of the environmental impacts of digital technologies, guide them in assessing the impact of digital teams / equipment / services, help build an action / transformation plan, and train employees (LCA, good practices). In addition to collective support, there is individual support for managers in the implementation of ambitious impact reduction strategies.

• Research and Development : The assessment of the environmental impacts of digital technology suffers from a lack of data and tools in line with the state of the scientific state of knowledge and adapted to the specificity of each company. Sectoral, geographical models and projections are also lacking. Our research and development work aims at improving knowledge and creating resources in this field. The services we offer are based on this approach to assess the impacts of digital technology, whether direct or indirect.

Hubblo already has outstanding references

In 2 years of activity, Hubblo has been able to contribute to many ambitious projects launched by pioneer organizations. We can highlight the evaluation and the plan of reduction of the environmental impacts of the DSI of Soleytanche Freyssinet (a subsidiary of Vinci Construction), the study on the impacts of one hour of video games for Ubisoft, or the comparative study between the impacts of refurbished and new equipment for ADEME. We can also note the quantitative study relative to the environmental gains of “GreenIT” actions of the French ministries for the DINUM, the development of open-source impacts assessment tools within the framework of a European collaboration for the SDIA and the support of Indie Hosters in their work for reducing the impact of their collaborative services. Finally, we have been able to advise organizations on the integration of solutions for continuously measuring the impacts of their infrastructures and private clouds, such as the BBC. We thank each of our interlocutors in these organizations and hope to continue to work alongside to make progress on these subjects.

Beyond past or current projects, we want to trigger others that will help develop digital commons, open-source tools, and open data, to contribute to a better assessment of digital impacts.

Hubblo wants to be an agent of profound systemic change.

Since the ecosystem lacks professionals trained in our subjects, sharing, mutual aid and openness are cardinal values ​​for Hubblo. We are committed to publish our work in a free and open manner, and sharing it as widely as possible with the ecosystem. We recognize the structuring work carried out by many of our colleagues and look forward to continuing to collaborate with Julie Orgelet (DDemain), Etienne Lees-Perasso (TIDE), Gauthier Roussilhe, as well as with all the dynamic players and experts in the ecosystem.

This desire to share does not stop at our commercial activities. The Hubblo team is strongly involved in Boavizta, an association of 130 professional and academic volunteers who want to collectively improve the methods, tools and data allowing the measurement of the impacts of digital technology on the environment. We found there a community of inspiring and inspired people, with whom we intend to work more, in particular by sharing the key lessons of our work, and the open source code of our tools.

We want to make Hubblo an agent of a systemic change. We wish to contribute to a better understanding of the direct and indirect impacts induced by digital activities on the climate, on the environment, on human health and on the economy. We hope that it will contribute to informed technological choices, in line with the consequences of the environmental crisis.

Our approach intend to be rigorous and is based on scientific work to which we wish to contribute.

Our approach intend to be transparent, taking into account the margins of error of the environmental data that we handle, offering everyone the opportunity to question and improve it.

Our approach aims to be radical in the face of inevitable systemic change, which needs to be anticipated rather than suffered.

We want to push the digital industry in this direction, in a collaborative way.

To remain faithful to our convictions, we have chosen financial independence by avoiding the increasingly widespread model of fundraising. Our evolution will therefore take place in line with planetary limits, the needs of our customers and our aspirations for a sustainable and equitable society.