# Sustainable IT in practice: How compliance is shaping green IT ![Author Raghav S](https://www.manageengine.com/ems/images/tools/employee/raghav-dp.png) **Raghav S** Last Updated: April 27, 2026 6 Min Read ## Overview For most of the last decade, sustainability in IT was a matter of intent. Organizations invested in energy-efficient hardware, published commitments, and called it green IT. Whether any of this was systematically measured, independently verified, or reported to regulators was largely optional. That era is ending. The global information and communication technology sector now accounts for an estimated [1.7—4%](https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Environment/Documents/Publications/2024/ITU-World%20Bank%20Measuring%20the%20Emissions-Energy%20Footprint%20of%20the%20ICT%20Sector%202024.pdf) of annual greenhouse gas emissions — a figure that regulators across the globe are no longer content to leave unmonitored. A wave of legislation now places legal obligations on large organizations to disclose emissions including those generated by their IT operations. Green IT sustainability has moved from a voluntary practice to a compliance requirement, and IT leaders need to understand what that shift actually demands. ## What sustainable IT encompasses Sustainable IT is not a single practice. It spans two complementary layers that together constitute a complete programme. The first is a set of hardware and procurement practices aimed at reducing the physical environmental footprint of IT equipment: sourcing devices certified to standards like Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) or Energy Star, extending refresh cycles to reduce e-waste, and implementing responsible end-of-life disposal under frameworks such as the EU WEEE Directive. These are periodic decisions made at the point of procurement or disposal — they describe what you buy and how you retire it. The second layer, and the one that compliance frameworks directly demand, is operational: the ongoing measurement and management of energy consumption, carbon emissions, and associated costs across a live endpoint fleet. This is what regulators ask for. Procurement records do not capture actual runtime energy consumption for Greenhouse Gas (GHG) reporting. Auditable, time-series data on actual device-level energy consumption is required to substantiate disclosures under regulatory scrutiny. Organizations that treat green IT hardware investments as a substitute for operational measurement will find themselves unable to produce the data that compliance frameworks require. ## The core compliance data requirement Every major reporting framework converges on the same ask: actual energy consumed in kWh, converted to CO₂ equivalent, attributed to the organisation’s operations — documented in a way that can be reproduced by an auditor. For IT, this means telemetry-based consumption data from the active device fleet, not manufacturer specifications or device-type estimates. ## What IT emissions data means in practice Sustainability reporting frameworks use the [GHG Protocol’s](https://ghgprotocol.org/sites/default/files/standards/ghg-protocol-revised.pdf) scope classification to categorize emissions. For IT departments, the mapping is straightforward: - **Scope 1** covers direct emissions from sources an organization owns or controls. In most office-based IT environments, these emissions are minimal. - **Scope 2** covers indirect emissions from purchased electricity. Energy consumption from desktops, laptops, and other endpoint devices falls within this category, making it the primary source of IT-related emissions for most organizations. In practice, satisfying Scope 2 for IT means three things: total electricity consumed in kWh across the reporting period, the emission factor used to convert that to CO₂ equivalent, and the resulting total expressed in metric tonnes — documented in a way that can be reproduced by an auditor. ## How IT energy consumption can be measured Most organizations start with what they have. Device uptime logs, combined with average wattage figures per device type, give a working estimate of energy consumption. For many teams, that is currently the entirety of their measurement approach. It is a reasonable starting point, but uptime multiplied by a generalized wattage factor cannot account for how consumption varies by workload, configuration, or device age. The result is a directional figure, not an auditable one. The more precise approach is OS-level telemetry. Windows captures actual system power usage via the System Resource Utilization Monitor (SRUM) that can be queried through the `powercfg /srumutil` command-line tool. Rather than estimating from averages, SRUM reads what the device actually drew during operation, at the component level, giving IT teams measured data rather than modeled data. Peripheral draws such as AC adapter losses and discrete GPU utilization are outside its scope. For most enterprise IT environments, the two approaches are not in competition. Uptime-based estimates serve power management and directional reporting. SRUM-based telemetry, collected continuously and aggregated at fleet level, is what produces the time-series energy data that compliance frameworks require. ## Turning energy data into a compliance asset Collecting the data is only half the task. Raw kWh figures from individual devices need to be aggregated across the fleet, converted to CO₂ equivalent using the appropriate regional emission factor, and structured in a format that sustainability teams and auditors can actually work with — total consumption for the period, per-device breakdowns, and a clear methodology note. The organizations best positioned for compliance are not necessarily those that started earliest. They are the ones that made continuous collection the default — so that when a regulator or auditor asks for twelve months of endpoint energy data, the answer already exists. ## Meet the author ![Author Image](https://www.manageengine.com/ems/images/tools/employee/raghav-dp.png) ### Raghav S Raghav is a product marketer at ManageEngine, specializing in UEMS. With experience in enterprise marketing and a focus on digital employee experience, he explores how endpoint performance, user experience, and proactive IT help teams resolve issues before they impact users—improving productivity and reducing digital friction.