ITIL 4 Sustainability key terms

The ability of an organization to create and deliver value over the long term without depleting the environmental, social, and economic resources on which that value depends.

The practices of designing, sourcing, operating, and retiring digital technology so that its environmental and social impacts are minimized and its positive contributions are maximized across the full lifecycle.

The contribution that information technology makes to an organization's wider sustainability goals, both by reducing technology's own footprint and by enabling sustainable outcomes elsewhere in the business.

A way of judging performance against three dimensions at once: environmental (planet), social (people), and economic (profit). It discourages optimizing one dimension at the expense of the others.

Environmental, social, and governance criteria used by investors, regulators, and customers to assess how responsibly an organization operates. ESG reporting increasingly drives expectations placed on IT services.

The principle of identifying which sustainability topics matter most because they significantly affect either the organization's performance or the decisions of its stakeholders. It focuses effort where impact is greatest.

The structured disclosure of an organization's environmental, social, and governance performance, typically against recognized frameworks. IT must supply reliable data on energy, emissions, and hardware lifecycle.

Gases released into the atmosphere that trap heat and contribute to climate change, expressed as carbon dioxide equivalent. IT both produces them through energy use and helps measure and reduce them.

Direct greenhouse gas emissions from sources owned or controlled by the organization, such as fuel burned in its own vehicles or backup generators. Data centers rarely generate these directly.

Indirect greenhouse gas emissions from purchased electricity, heat, steam, or cooling consumed by the organization. For data centers and IT estates, this is usually the largest measured category.

All other indirect emissions in the value chain, including purchased goods and services, business travel, employee commuting, and the manufacture and disposal of IT hardware. Usually the biggest and hardest to measure.

The greenhouse gas emissions associated with extracting materials, manufacturing, transporting, and eventually disposing of a product, before any energy is used in operation. Significant for servers, laptops, and network equipment.

A structured method for quantifying environmental impacts of a product or service from raw material extraction through use to end of life, used to compare design options and support sustainability claims.

An economic model that keeps materials in use for as long as possible through reuse, repair, refurbishment, and recycling, rather than the linear take-make-dispose pattern. Central to sustainable hardware management.

Discarded electrical and electronic equipment. It contains valuable materials but also hazardous substances, so responsible collection, refurbishment, and certified recycling are essential sustainability controls.

Keeping hardware, software, or infrastructure in productive service longer through maintenance, upgrades, and refurbishment, thereby spreading manufacturing emissions over more years of useful output.

The controlled retirement of IT assets through certified recycling or refurbishment partners, with data securely erased and hazardous materials handled lawfully. It closes the loop on hardware lifecycle.

Delivering the same or greater useful output with less energy input. In IT it covers hardware selection, workload placement, cooling design, and eliminating idle or redundant capacity.

A ratio of total data center energy consumption to the energy delivered to IT equipment. A value near 1.0 indicates that little energy is spent on cooling, lighting, and distribution overhead.

The amount of carbon dioxide equivalent emitted per unit of electricity generated or consumed. It varies by region and time, so scheduling flexible workloads when it is low reduces emissions.

Scheduling or shifting computing workloads in time or location to periods and places where electricity comes from lower-carbon sources, reducing emissions without changing total work done.

A facility designed and operated to minimize environmental impact through efficient cooling, renewable energy sourcing, waste heat reuse, and careful capacity management across its lifecycle.

Selecting suppliers and products using environmental and social criteria alongside price and performance, including energy ratings, repairability, take-back arrangements, and supplier sustainability commitments.

The environmental and social performance of organizations in the supply chain. Buyers assess it through questionnaires, audits, contractual clauses, and codes of conduct that flow down obligations.

The full sequence of activities and parties that create and deliver a product or service, from raw materials through production and delivery to use and end of life. Sustainability impacts occur throughout it.

Any person or group affected by, or able to affect, an organization's sustainability performance, such as customers, employees, regulators, investors, communities, and suppliers. Their expectations shape priorities.

Using digital technology and data to reduce environmental and social impact across an organization and its ecosystem, for example through dematerialization, smart logistics, and remote service delivery.

Replacing physical products, travel, or media with digital equivalents, such as virtual meetings or digital documents, thereby reducing material and energy consumption associated with the physical alternative.

Making misleading or unsubstantiated claims about environmental benefits. In IT it includes overstated energy savings or unverified carbon neutrality claims, and it creates reputational and regulatory risk.

Specific, measurable targets an organization sets for environmental and social performance, which must be translated into IT service targets and tracked like any other service performance measure.

Quantified measures used to track sustainability performance, such as energy per transaction, emissions per user, hardware reuse rate, and percentage of suppliers meeting sustainability criteria.

The ongoing, iterative activity of identifying and implementing improvements to products, services, and practices. In sustainability it drives progressive reduction of impact rather than one-off fixes.

The series of steps an organization uses to create and deliver products and services to consumers. Mapping it reveals where waste, emissions, and social risks occur and where improvements pay off.

The ITIL 4 model describing how the components and activities of an organization work together to create value. Sustainability considerations can be embedded in each component, including governance and practices.

Building environmental and social considerations into services, architectures, and processes from the outset, rather than retrofitting them afterwards, so that impact reduction is a default outcome.