Categories
Offers
13 achievements

ADEME IT4GREEN: studies on digital solutions that are presented as a support for the transition in 6 sectors of activity

Report The Navigation

With DDemain, Mavana and Gauthier Roussilhe, we produced a report wich summarises the potential contributions of digitisation to the environmental objectives and levers of six economic sectors, as presented in the academic and industrial literature and by the actors operating in the sectors studied.

Details

The research was based on a series of interviews and written feedback from stakeholders and experts in the sectors concerned, combined with a literature review that gave us a broad, though not exhaustive, view of the potential uses of digital technology in each sector.

A qualitative analysis of 30 solutions then allowed us to explore in more depth the mechanisms by which these solutions are expected to support the objectives of the ecological transition in the French context, and to lay the foundations for a net impact analysis that will be carried out on a subset of solutions in the remainder of this study.

Read the report

ADEME IT4GREEN: Study of knowledge and net impacts methods in the digital sector

Report The Navigation

With DDemain, Mavana and Gauthier Roussilhe, we produced a report reviewing existing knowledge and methods in relation with net impacts of digitisation, i.e. the impacts that could be ‘avoided’ by digital technology in other sectors.

Details This report summarises the history and issues involved in assessing the net environmental impacts of digital solutions. First, the basic concepts of this type of assessment, such as net accounting, rebound effects, attributional and consequential approaches, are reviewed. Next, the classification and explanation of the direct and indirect effects of digital solutions are defined on the basis of existing scientific literature. Thirdly, a historical review of the issues related to the contribution of digitisation to climate policies and related publications is presented from 1995 to the present day. The report also provides a state of the art of scientific knowledge on the environmental effects of digitisation. Finally, a comparative analysis of existing methods for assessing the net, or at least indirect, environmental impacts of digital solutions is developed for each key methodological point. This report provides a comprehensive and extensive summary of all the scientific and methodological knowledge available for assessing the net environmental impact of digitisation.
Read the study

Support for the implementation of a Responsible Digital Strategy for the Communications Department

Support services The Course

Rennes city communications department initially commissioned Hubblo to carry out an evaluation of its digital communications tools, defining the method and monitoring indicators.

Details

We had the great pleasure of accompanying Estelle Soleillant and Matthieu Delsaut, respectively digital innovation project manager and studies and development project manager at the Rennes city Communications Department, and Guillaume Rouan, in charge of digital media at the cultural center Les Champs Libres.

Having embarked on an LCA process for digital services and communication campaigns, their vision has profoundly evolved.

“Over and above the service itself, this collaboration has enabled us to become more aware of and more proficient in LCA methodology. This was the first step towards more sustainable communication, in line with our values of public service and general interest. Today, we’re continuing our progress, with the aim of making these results accessible and mobilizable by our teams, as part of a common good approach.”

See commons produced by Rennes

Softawere: software impact assessment for SDIA

Software The Navigation

On behalf of the Sustainable Digital Infrastructure Alliance, a Dutch NGO working with public institutions to better understand and reduce the environmental impact of digital infrastructures, Hubblo has developed an open-source tool chain for assessing the environmental impact of software in the development phase.

Details In concrete terms, a development team obtains, in its continuous integration chain, estimates of the environmental footprint of the latest version of the software that has been submitted to the platform. The measurement can be triggered at each commit, pull-request or event, as it is the case for any test or continuous integration job. Environmental impact metrics are accessible either directly in numerical form in the CI console, or in a Grafana-based metrics dashboard. Thanks to this project, the SDIA has been able to assess the environmental impact of some fifty open-source software projects on behalf of the Umweltbundesamt, feeding into a study due for publication at the end of 2024.
See Github

Study of levers to reduce the impact of mails, with a mixed attributional and consequential approach - Iroco / ADEME

Support services The Navigation

As part of an ADEME funding program, Hubblo helped Iroco to evaluate original eco-design levers for their responsible e-mail solution.

Details The various options and functionalities designed by Iroco to reduce the environmental impact of the service and its use have been studied to assess the benefits. The originality of this approach is that it combines 3 types of modeling: attributional, short-term consequential and long-term consequential. To find out more about these approaches, see the dedicated Hubblo article.
Read the study

Audit of the methodology for assessing the environmental impact of websites and information systems using the Fruggr tool developed by Digital4Better

Audit The Navigation

As part of its commitment to sharing its evaluation method transparently with its customers, Digital4Better, the developer of the Fruggr tool, commissioned Hubblo to carry out an in-depth audit of this methodology.

Details The audit highlighted the method's strengths and identified areas for improvement. It also paved the way for further research into the state of the art in environmental impact assessment. This work focused in particular on the multi-criteria impact assessment approach for electricity, proposed in open-source by Digital4Better, as well as on the rules for allocating services and equipment. It also looked at how distances are taken into account when calculating the impact of networks, and at issues linked to uncertainties in the assessment.

Integration of energy consumption metrics for physical servers in the CO2Scope GHG monitoring suite.

Software The Navigation

For Easyvirt, publisher of greenhouse gas emissions and energy efficiency monitoring solutions for VMWare infrastructures, Hubblo developed support for Scaphandre for Windows Server. The mission included helping to deploy Scaphandre on the customer's bare metal server park (Windows Server and GNU/Linux RHEL), as well as integrating energy metrics into CO2Scope, the environmental monitoring solution developed by Easyvirt.

Details

To cover a heterogeneous infrastructure, with one part virtualized with VMWare hypervisors and another made up of physical Windows Server and Red Hat Entreprise Linux servers, Easyvirt called on Hubblo to complement its CO2Scope solution, which monitors GHG emissions from VMWare infrastructures. The development of Windows Server support made it possible to integrate Scaphandre, an open-source agent for monitoring energy consumption, into this infrastructure, to provide energy metrics for physical servers. Hubblo was also involved in packaging and deploying the agent on Linux and Windows servers, as well as uploading data to the CO2Scope platform.

As a result, Easyvirt's customers are able to objectively monitor the evolution of their infrastructure's GHG impact, in line with hardware and software developments, upgrades, architectural changes, etc.

See on Github

GIVE project: direct and indirect environmental impacts of the digitization of training in Europe

Report The Navigation

On behalf of the European Union (Erasmus+), and in partnership with three European educational organizations, we have conducted a study aimed at understanding the direct and indirect environmental impacts of the digitization of training activities in Europe.

Details This study, based on a survey of 350 training players and focus groups in 3 European countries, explored the direct and indirect environmental impacts associated with different training modalities integrating digital services and equipment. It led to the production of a MOOC on reducing the environmental impact of training. This MOOC is available free of charge on the platform of our partner My Green Training Box, which offers a range of free training courses on sustainability issues in different sectors.
See the project's website

Critical review of a model for assessing GHG emissions from a service hosted in the AWS cloud

Audit The Navigation

For ContentSquare, Hubblo carried out a critical review of an internal model used to assess the greenhouse gas emissions of infrastructures hosted on the AWS public cloud.

Details This mission enabled ContentSquare to refine its internal model for assessing GHG emissions associated with services hosted on AWS, based on regular exchanges and a deliverable including a critical review and suggestions for improvement. Hubblo's scientific watch enabled us to target the most up-to-date studies, models and data for estimating the impact of the various cloud resources used: storage, compute, network, etc.

Ubisoft video game lifecycle analysis and impact reduction plan

Support services The Course

On behalf of Ubisoft and in partnership with DDemain, Hubblo contributed to the Life Cycle Assessment of its video games. Hubblo also contributed to the construction of an impact reduction plan through the facilitation of collaborative workshops.

Details Ubisoft is an international video game publisher. Since 2015, the company has been committed to reducing its environmental impact. The study, conducted in 2021, aimed to assess the impact of Ubisoft video games over the year, as well as on the scale of one hour of play. It takes into account the different gaming terminals and equipment (fixed/mobile console, PC Gamer, Laptop, Smartphone...), the different markets in which the company operates (Europe, Asia, Oceania, Africa, US/Canada, South America), the networks used in the game (fixed and mobile), the gaming modes (Standard offline, Standard online, Streaming... ), distribution modes (Online, DVD/BluRay, Cartridge, Code In a Box), datacenters supporting the business (DCs in-house, AWS, MS Azure, Google Cloud). It helped identify impact hotspots. Their detailed analyses fed into co-construction workshops, and enabled us to draw up an ambitious and realistic impact reduction plan targeting the company and the video game industry in general.

Continuous impact assessment in the BBC's private cloud, with Scaphandre

Software The Navigation

Working with Hubblo, the BBC's R&D teams have integrated Scaphandre, Hubblo's open-source software for measuring IT server energy consumption, into the company's Open Stack private cloud platform.

Details As a result, BCC employees who use virtual machines on the platform obtain a dynamic assessment of their GHG emissions per use, in a dedicated dashboard, which helps stimulating a more sober approach to their uses. This initiative has given rise to a blog post explaining the approach and the technical underpinnings of the project.
Read the article

Assessment of the environmental impact of a set of reconditioned products

Report The Navigation

On behalf of the French Agency for Ecological Transition (ADEME), DDemain and Hubblo did a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to establish the environmental footprint of reconditioned digital equipment, compared to their newly manufactured equivalents, over their entire lifecycles.

Details The study shows, for example, that buying a refurbished smartphone rather than a new one saves 87% to 64% of annual impact. The study also revealed significant variations in impact within the industry, due to a variety of practices relating to extended lifespan, the addition of new accessories, whether or not parts are changed systematically, the use of second-hand parts, the volume of packaging and the materials used, the sourcing market and the place of reconditioning. The lifespan of equipment is a major contributor to its impact. In order to maximize the impact avoided by refurbished products, the study proposes a number of best practices aimed at users, refurbishers, platforms and legislators.
Read the study

Treebal messaging lifecycle analysis

Support services The Course

On Treebal's request, we worked with Gauthier Roussilhe to carry out an attributional Life Cycle Assessment (LCA-a) of their secure, eco-responsible instant messaging service.

Details In addition to the initial objective of objectifying Treebal's eco-design work, we wanted to take an educational approach: since LCA is a standardized methodology (ISO 14040 & 14044), the final report often has a formalism that limits its handling and comprehension to non-experts. With a will to opening up knowledge and data, we have documented the objectives and content of each stage of the assessment simply.
See the Treebal LCA (Gitbook) report