Table Of ContentSustainable IT Playbook for
Technology Leaders
Design and implement sustainable IT practices and unlock
sustainable business opportunities
Niklas Sundberg
BIRMINGHAM—MUMBAI
Sustainable IT Playbook for Technology Leaders
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To my mother, Agneta, my father, Jerry, and my sister, Malin, for being my
inspiration, catalyst, and North Star. To my wife, Michela, thank you for being
my loving and devoted companion throughout our shared life adventure. To my
children, Wilgot and Harald, who inspired me to write this book so that they and
generations to come can live on a habitable planet tomorrow.
- Niklas Sundberg
Foreword
After a summer of record-breaking heatwaves, raging wildfires, and droughts, it probably should not
have surprised anyone that the climate crisis is as imminent as ever. There is an acute awareness, at
least in Europe, that now that we feel the consequences of global warming, it will not stop at a few
warm summer days in the middle of July. Unfortunately, we have not seen the end of this. Instead of
the news flow being filled with the acute climate crisis, the anxiety in the media is primarily dominated
by inflation, recession, and the war in Ukraine. I have much higher anxiety about the climate than the
current financial situation. For me, climate anxiety is increasing by the day. We are extremely late on
the ball and have lived in denial for too long. It is a very distinctly uncomfortable feeling.
A few nights ago, I spoke to a young 17-year-old boy in London who was having trouble sleeping due
to the dramatic events of climate change. As a young boy growing up in London, he has witnessed
the dramatic change in nature where the wetlands in South London have dried up, and he sees the
whole ecosystem being completely disrupted outside his window. This is, unfortunately, the reality
for our future generations unless we get on the right course to curb the climate and ecological crisis
unraveling in front of our eyes.
For years, scientific research has tried to tell us that we have an immediate and present danger in
front of us where we have pushed the planetary boundaries too far. The concentration of greenhouse
gas emissions getting trapped in the atmosphere causes the earth’s temperature to rise; we experience
a deficit in fresh water, and waste streams, especially electronic waste, are continuing to rise at an
unprecedented scale. These catastrophic outcomes are consequences of failure to take the bold and
necessary steps to manage the climate and ecological crisis over the past decades.
To me, however, sustainability is a holistic word that spans much more comprehensively than just
the environment. It is not only about fostering a healthy planet but creating a promising future for
everyone. First and foremost, taking care of our most basic needs in food security, global health,
energy security, water scarcity, and empowering women. Beyond our basic needs, we must create
educational opportunities, equal workplace opportunities, and a more equitable and inclusive society
for everyone. One of my north starts throughout my career has been to have a more gender-equal
management team going out than before I got there. I firmly believe that diverse and equitable teams
are much more intelligent than homogenous ones.
We need leaders to dream big, paint a vision, set a common direction for travel, and lead sustainably.
If we do not have leaders who do their tasks sustainably, I do not think we can create a promising
future for anyone. We cannot only focus on people and the planet, but a fundamental piece is having
a long-term prospering economy and a sound macroeconomic system.
My leadership roots stem from football growing up playing but also coaching in the southern parts of
Sweden in Skåne. Over this summer, although my heart was rooting for the Swedish women’s team,
I watched with great interest how Sarina Wiegman, the England women’s head coach, transformed
a team of 11 players into a collective and collaborative unit with a common belief that the Women’s
Euro 2022 Championship was within their reach. They reached that goal by beating Germany in
overtime 2-1 in front of a crowd of 87,000 at Wembley Stadium in London. Sarina made her team
dream big, see the vision, and made them believe in what they could accomplish together. Amazing
things can happen when you have a team that is completely switched on. It is not the best players that
win, but the players with the best team, and England’s women’s team are no exception. The leadership
lessons on the field and in the locker room are entirely translatable for the corporate world, whether
you are a school teacher, public servant, software engineer in a tech company, or politician. Building
high-performing teams is about welding together a diverse team, leveraging each other’s strengths
and weaknesses, yet investing in relationships with your teammates. It is ju’t as important what you
do on the field as it is off it. As leaders, we are responsible for fostering our talents, lifting them, and
encouraging them. We need to visualize storytelling, talk about the direction inspirationally, and
connect it to the team, the culture, and how you operate to get people to believe in that. If we lead
through people instead of looking down on them, the team will elevate themselves, exuberate self-
leadership, and take responsibility for their journey. To me, this taps into being sustainable when the
team is connected and switched on because instead of pushing, pushing, pushing, you are inspiring,
and the team owns the outcome and results. It goes well beyond delivering on the financial targets.
Having spent the better part of my professional career within the tech sector, I have experienced what
technology advancement can do to democratize and fundamentally change the fabric of our society.
Modern leadership requires a strong purpose and being value-driven on one side of the spectrum.
On the other side of the spectrum is technology. Technology is essential to solving business problems,
and we need more robust convergence between the two spectrums. We need technology leaders such
as CIOs and CTOs at the CEO and chairman levels to advance the technology agenda in every aspect
of our business environment.
Being part of a giant tech company when the Covid-19 pandemic transcended, I have seen how
companies that were not prepared for remote working quickly scrambled and, within a few weeks,
were fully up and running in a remote working setting. It was a defining digitalization moment that
propelled technology adoption in weeks and months, which generally would have taken years to get
there. Although the Covid-19 pandemic propelled digitalization forward in many ways, transforming
the work setting into a hybrid workplace, cultivating diversity, equity, and inclusion, we also learned
how much the human connection does for us, at least when we talk about driving innovation and
building culture. We cannot replace physical meetings and connections with virtual ones. In the future,
we need to find the best out of the two worlds.
The vast opportunities that exist with technology make me optimistic about the future. Without
technology, it is almost impossible to make the advancements we need in all industries. We need industrial
decarbonization solutions at speed and scale to deliver carbon-free steel and cement, transform our
transportation fleet into electric vehicles, overhaul our agricultural practice, provide clean energy with
giant battery storage, and develop carbon capture solutions. It all starts with innovation, technology,
and sustainable business practices.
Although we can achieve tremendous sustainability advancements, we cannot forget to build our digital
infrastructure sustainably. IT is starting to have an increased impact on the environment. Our data
centers worldwide emit 2-3 percent of the world’s emissions, which is on par with the entire aviation
industry. Another major concern is our electronic waste, which has become the most significant waste
stream in the world. We must forcefully move from linear business models to circular regenerative
business models.
Forming new ecosystems beyond the traditional customer/supplier relationship across industries is
also critical. A great example of a cross-industry ecosystem was when Microsoft established their new
sustainable data centers in Sweden; they formed an intimate relationship with Swedish utility provider
Vattenfall to ensure that the data centers could run on clean energy 24/7. The partnership advances
the company’s sustainability agenda: Microsoft’s commitment to run on 100 percent renewable energy
globally by 2025 and Vattenfall’s strategy to enable fossil-free living in one generation.
I see that several fundamental things need to happen to curb the climate and ecological crisis and
create a more equitable and just society. First, we need much more robust, structural, and impactful
political leadership that looks past the next election and even the next decade. So far, our policies
have failed us, and it is necessary to enact bolder climate and social policies, infuse faster decision-
making, and promote sustainable business practices. We must propel climate action forward at the
same pace that Covid-19 propelled digitalization. Second, we must direct capital and investment flows
to industries and businesses actively taking responsibility and pursuing a sustainability agenda. The
financial markets have a critical role in directing capital responsibly and sustainably. It does not mean
that we should exclude fossil fuel heavy industries such as oil and gas; we need to work with, and only
invest in, the ones that authentically want to make a change and take a position to sustainably deliver
a change of their business. Third, we need to overhaul our accounting and legal systems. Today, a
large corporation can show a profit of one billion dollars in financial terms, but it does not consider
how much of the world’s resources were consumed. How much carbon emission was released into
the atmosphere, how many rare earth minerals were taken out, or how much water was consumed?
What is the actual profit for the world if these non-financial factors are considered?
Although my climate anxiety runs high, I remain an optimist, no matter how dark it looks. I believe
we have the technology, the courageous leaders, and the capabilities to develop the technology further
to get us on the right trajectory to curb the climate crisis. I firmly believe in the collective force that we
want to save the planet and for people worldwide to have a good life. We must take a more prominent
stance, fearlessly driving and collaborating with all forces to pull in the right direction. Everything
starts with people, and technology is the enabler. It starts with you and me. I hope reading this book
will give you the necessary tools to start or accelerate your sustainability journey.
- Hélène Barnekow
Executive technology leader and passionate sustainability advocate Partner at Ascension AS and board
member, former managing director Microsoft Sweden and Telia Sweden, and senior vice president at EMC
Contributors
About the author
Niklas Sundberg is a senior vice president (SVP), chief information officer (CIO), and a proud
leader of a passionate group of IT professionals committed to digital transformation at ASSA ABLOY
Global Solutions division. Niklas firmly believes in the diversity of people and the power of technology
to positively change the world.
With over 20 years of experience driving change in public and privately held companies, his professional
background has a proven track record of successfully managing large-scale IT, customer experience,
finance, and operations transformations impacting front-line sales, back-office profits, and cash flow.
Before joining ASSA ABLOY, Niklas was a Managing Partner at Gartner and has served as executive vice
president (EVP) on the executive management team of Connecta, a large publicly traded professional
services firm.
Niklas is a passionate sustainable/green IT advocate. The lack of literature on the topic inspired him
to write this book to educate, engage, and activate other technology leaders to get started with their
sustainable IT journey. He is also part of the board of directors for SustainableIT.org, a non-profit
organization (NPO) led by technology executives seeking to advance sustainability worldwide through
technology leadership.
I want to thank the people who have been close to me and supported me, especially my wife Michela,
my parents, my kids, and my team at work. This book would not have been possible without some
fantastic contributors who were selflessly willing to share their experiences, knowledge, and wisdom.
I am grateful for their contribution and humbly proud to share their perspectives throughout the
book. These contributors are, in order of appearance: Hélène Barnekow, Nicole Mercedes Zethelius,
Lakshmanan “Laks” Vaidyanathan, Sophia Flucker, Lars Schedin, André Christ, Jedidiah “Jed” Yueh,
Asim Hussain, Elsa Westin, Stephen Fuller, Malin Russell, Annika Overödder, Tony Tiyou, Abdul
Basit, Camilla Cederquist, Anna Ljungberg, Yann Carré, Michael Mansard, Ann Molin, Kimi Zou,
Rainer Karcher, Sanjay Podder, and Teemu Salmi.
A special thank you to the team at Packt Publishing: Shweta Bairoliya, for believing in my idea
and enabling me to write this book, and overseeing this project from start to end. Deeksha Thakkar
and Kinnari Chohan, for your tireless efforts to guide and steer the process, and Rayyan Khan, for
pre-launch marketing activities. Finally, my technical reviewer, Marta Muñoz Méndez-Villamil has
been my compass throughout the process. Marta, I am forever grateful for all your input, feedback,
and encouragement along the journey!
Thank you all so much! This book would not have been possible without all of you.
About the reviewer
Marta Muñoz Méndez-Villamil is currently working as the sustainability business advisor at AWS.
With over 25 years of experience advising organizations on their use of various technologies, Marta
helped found IDC´s Technology for Sustainability and Social Impact Practice in Europe in 2019, a
dedicated team of analysts and consultants advising technology vendors and users on the ability of IT
to help drive corporate sustainability goals and strategies beyond the IT function. As part of her work
in this team, Marta was instrumental in driving the creation of IDC´s Technology and Sustainability
Index, evaluating the sustainability capabilities and portfolios of various IT providers, and identifying
best practices to replicate in the industry. Since September 2022, Marta works as a sustainability
business advisor in the AWS Global Sustainability team. In her role, Marta helps deliver the cloud
service provider´s sustainability strategy directly supporting AWS’s strategic customers by leveraging
its sustainability ecosystem of solutions and services.
