Digital Emissions: Should Heritage Organisations Worry About Them, and How To Lower Them

Dan Miles: Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Dan Miles. I'm the Senior Sector Development Advisor at Historic England and I'm responsible for running the sector net zero project which is there to support heritage organisations on their journey to net zero. As part of this support, we've been running a series of monthly webinars and this week or this month is we have Claire Marchetti who is the Carbon and Sustainability Manager at Historic England who is going to be talking about Digital Emissions and I will leave that with Claire and I'll share screen and carry on Claire please. Yes, thank you. 

Claire Marchetti: Thank you and thank you for having me. I'm very pleased to be here and thank you everyone for joining up. Hopefully, you'll find it interesting and useful, but if not please let us know so we can improve. So, as Dan mentioned, I'll be talking about Digital Emissions. Should heritage organisations worry about them and how can we lower them? I feel like the answer is inherent in that question, we probably should.  

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Claire Marchetti: But so just to give a quick overview of what I'll be talking about today. I'll introduce myself and have this gen editor. I'll talk a little bit about what digital emissions are because I'm aware that we can have a lot of-, we can mean a lot of different things with a lot of similar words in within sustainability that itself can mean a lot of different things. So, I'll just kind of set the scene for what we're talking about.  

Claire Marchetti: Then, I'll talk a little bit about what Historic England is doing as an organisation to be mindful and lower our emissions, specifically within the digital sphere. And then, I'll go on to talk a bit about what you can do as heritage organisations and as people within the heritage organisations to lower your emissions. And then I will just have a little bit about beyond carbon because obviously, we know that sustainability is far wider. So, hopefully that sounds like what you've signed up for and I will move on.  

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Claire Marchetti: So, my name as discussed is Claire Marchetti and I'm the Carbon and Sustainability Manager at Historic England. I've been here for a bit over just a little bit over three years now, and I work with teams across the organisation to support climate action essentially as well as monitoring our carbon emissions and being responsible for our sustainability reporting as an organisation.  

Claire Marchetti: Most recently, while my team has been focused on the actions and making changes at a kind of delivery level within Historic England, I've been focused on task force for climate related financial disclosures, TCFD, if anyone is aware of that and making sure that climate change and to a certain extent nature, we're looking at now is embedded within our governance so that we kind of don't have to worry essentially. Previously I worked at National Highways, an National Trust, coming into sustainability by way of project management.  

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Claire Marchetti: So, what are Digital Emissions? So, we're talking about digital ways of working virtual using computers, internet, cloud storage, that sort of thing. And I think it's fair to say that digital ways of working aren't going away. Yes, some people are stepping back in their private lives, but for work, it's actually becoming more useful, more integrated, and we are using them better. There's some real positives about digital ways of working. It means that I can meet all of you and I see some people are here from Malta which is amazing. Hello, without having to travel anywhere. So, we're saving on those travel emissions and also reaching wider groups of people, which I'm sure if you're running heritage organisations, you do appreciate as well. I must say, I'm not sure how many of you would have turned up if this was in person. It would probably had to be in London. I'd have had to travel 3, 4 hours to get there.  

Claire Marchetti: Is it worth it? Probably not. So, they do have really positive points but I think we are aware that there is an impact on the environment and on us as human beings living within that environment. So, we need to think about how we use them and it can be quite daunting I think but reduce is always the key one, but if you think about it from different ways, it can means different things. So, today especially, I'm going to be focusing on those carbon emissions or greenhouse gas emissions which come from the ongoing operating emissions from using the energy and the resource use to power both the data centers and our cloud hosting, but also the energy used to interact with them as well. So, the devices used to power them, me talking to you via the internet, that sort of thing. And they're ongoing.  

Claire Marchetti: Then, we've got what we call embodied emissions of the hardware which is the carbon emissions used to create that hardware to begin with. They're also known as upstream emissions if you are carbon literate. So, this refers to the carbon emissions used to create them. So, the material extraction, the manufacturer, the distribution of the all of the parts and the devices. And we're talking about data centers, on premise servers, which include cloud hosting and all of the devices which we use to interact with them as well.  

Claire Marchetti: And then right at the end of the life cycle, there's the downstream emissions such as waste, the energy used to recover, recycle, ultimately if they end up in landfill, what happens there? So, I'm really focused on those carbon emissions, but obviously throughout what I've talked about, there's wider impacts and aspects as well, which we'll look at very briefly a little while later. I'm going to say now I'm not talking about AI. Most of what I talk about can be related to AI in terms of that responsible usage, but I think AI could be another webinar in itself. So I'm really going to focus on the what we know and how we know how to use rather than that more of an unknown AI thing, AI aspect. That said, if you want to-, if there are any relevant AI chats which you want to put in the chat questions for presenter, I can answer a couple of those at the end. But really my focus is on those carbon emissions or digital ways of working now.  

Claire Marchetti: So, that's what the emissions are asking and just I'll put some of it in perspective. So, I have some figures which were from an ISER webinar I went to about the hidden costs of AI. Having said I won't talk about them but between 2010 and 2018 data centers used about 1% of the global power use and 2024 that had risen to 1.5% of the global power use which is about 500 terowatt hours and that and a terowatt hour is a trillion watt hours.  

Claire Marchetti: So we can see that's quite a big number. By 2030, it's expected to be 30% of the global power use and a 1000 terowatt hours. The power demand for normal data centers, so a hyper scalar data center designed for Amazon for example, is designed to you have a power demand of 50 megawatt. One wind turbine in optimal conditions can produce 33 megawatt, sorry, not 30. So you can start to see how those numbers add up and the fact that we do reduction is key then if we want to keep using it and keep make those uses sustainable.  

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Claire Marchetti: So, I promised I would tell you what we're doing because what's really frustrating is when you come to these and then, they're not people aren't actually doing anything. And I must admit when I started tossing it up, we are doing quite a lot and I'm quite pleased with ourselves. I'll also say our IT department, we refer to as IMT the Information Management Team. So if that comes out that's what I'm referring to our IT department. I split it into the physical and virtual because I think one of the aspects which makes this so hard is that the virtual impacts, we can't really see that they don't necessarily affect us on a day-to-day basis but we have-, and then we don't necessarily think about the physical aspects because they're there constantly on that day-to-day basis.  

Claire Marchetti: So, we are attacking our digital emissions from both sides because we need to have the use of the devices to be able to access those virtual. So, we are in reusing more and more equipment within Historic England itself and this has the added benefit of lowering our costs because we don't have to buy more, but it also means that we things aren't being made so much, the demand is lower and we're lengthening the lifespan of those devices. So, the embodied emissions are being used for longer and it just means that it being emissions intensity ratio of how long it lasts is lower as well which is helpful.  

Claire Marchetti: We're also encouraging the return of mobile phones. We are not putting a blanket man on them. There are some teams and some people who definitely need mobile phones but there's a lot of people who with the rise of teams don't really use their mobile phones and therefore, we are giving them a choice to return them. Coupled with that reuse, we can give them out to the people who do need them and we're also then we don't have to spend so much on our phones next time because we're not needing so many and we don't have to worry so much about cybersecurity and we don't have to pay for those contracts. So there's added benefits as well from thinking about these digital emissions in a physical way.  

Claire Marchetti: We are also now we've kind of got a hold a bit more of a hold on digital emissions. We're specifying lower emission models for our hardware refreshes and you can do this very simply by looking out for Eco labels such as EPEAT, looking at product carbon footprints and the energy efficiency of models. We have specified certain ones. It's good to know which ones you're talking about and which ones matter to you. but the best we can reckon because we weren't measuring carbon at the last roll out is that this year's devices, this year, last year, they were rolled out last year were about 20% lower in embodied emissions than the previous generation of laptops which is great.  

Claire Marchetti: And we're also using this to support our ongoing wider procurement work where we're trying to make our procurement more generally sustainable. And I believe that there's a webinar in July about that if you would like to attend. So, coupled with this we're also looking at our business models and our purchasing standards. So, do we need to buy the laptops or can we rent them? Is there ways when we buy the mobile phones that we can lengthen their usage and still be within our cybersecurity regulations? So for example, by currently we have to refresh them every 2 years to be there. That's an awful, lot of hardware just essentially going to waste and an awful lot of money. If we pay a bit more upfront, we could make those mobiles last for 5 years instead and they'll still be perfectly good at the end which leads me on to that next item, donating for charity.  

Claire Marchetti: So, as part of this laptop refresh, the laptops we were taking back were perfectly usable. They were perfectly fine, but we needed a higher Windows platform. I've completely forgotten the right words for that, to run our systems on. So, we worked with the good things foundation and so far, we have donated 560 laptops to charity. Through this they're going to be donating those to other people or where they really can't donate them, they're going to recycle them. But it means that we're letting those laptops last longer and we're helping out people who might not be able to access the internet or you have those laptops as well. So, we're making it better for those people. Since doing this, they've also offered now to take on more of our equipment such as our monitors and which will really help as well because again, they're not necessarily good enough for us, but they're good enough for others, which sounds awful, but you know what I meant.  

Claire Marchetti: Coupled with this, we're also reviewing our processes to minimise the need for equipment and minimise our logistics processes. So, that distribution aspect. So with the laptop refresh, real energy was taken to understand what was the best way of getting the laptops out to everyone and the best way of collecting laptops into everyone. This did come with some hiccups. We inadvertently got lots of bubble wrap, but we donated that to some local charity shops so that they could use it. And this means that we've got smaller processes as well, smaller usage as well. We're looking more widely at our HR processes as well. So starters and levers policy, making sure that we get equipment back where necessary and that we don't send out more than necessary enabling that reuse of equipment within HE.  

Claire Marchetti: For example, I'm a home worker and when I joined I was sent my laptop, two screens but not the ability to use both screens, a keyboard, a mouse and a printer. I already had a keyboard and mouse for my old work, so I took those back, and my old work was a bit be-used. I didn't have the space for two screens, nor did I have the ability to play them. So, I've ended up giving one of my screens back. My printer, while very useful for scanning documents when I was moving house, I haven't needed to print anything off or when I have printed off, I've been in the office and needed to do that. So we are looking at making it hard not harder but people have to think through and request items rather than just sending it all out as a bundle in one, again so that people can get what they need, but we're not giving people things they don't need, and then having to take it back or do that sort of thing.  

Claire Marchetti: So that's all of the physical side of things. Oh, and encouraging small behavior changes like turning screens off at the end of day, shutting down your laptop at the end of the day. And I know about 30 years ago, it was better to keep things on standby. Nowadays, computers are absolutely fine and it's also better in terms of the updates, cybersecurity to shut it down and then reopen. You don't necessarily save much energy with that but if everyone starts doing that, that does add up to a little tiny bit of reduction which is always helpful and it makes you more aware of other things you can do with that. Virtually, where you know more of the digital emissions are as well. We're improving carbon accounting of our IT emissions.  

Claire Marchetti: Now, this probably sounds really dull and boring but has been one of the more helpful aspects. Previously we were have very thorough in terms of what we included but we were using spend data for our IT emissions which was we knew was going to be inaccurate. we were over-counting on much on lots of things and it wasn't really giving us the true picture of where our emissions lay. So, by improving our IT, our accounting, we can actually start to focus on our hotspots and areas which do matter.  

Claire Marchetti: So for example, we know how much the carbon footprint of each laptop now and we're looking at our mobiles from there. We also know where we were double counting because we were counting this spend but actually that was just running the Microsoft systems which or using our own electricity which we already monitor. Microsoft have a free dashboard which you can check into which gives you their version of your emissions being used within the cloud etc. You kind of have to trust it because there's no other way of getting that but it's better than not having it.  

Claire Marchetti: We're also improving our governance. So a lot of the changes IMT are making are fully within IMT remit but others actually do need the support of other teams or they're not necessarily within IMT remit. So for example, when the archive teams need or lab teams need some software or equipment, IT don't necessarily have the wherewithal to say no, you don't need it to refresh that much and actually that storage is going to add up and cost quite a lot of money for the organisation. So, we're trying to bring in governance which gives IMT that ability to turn around and say those things and be listened to but also help teams understand those changes and understand the costs of it because although ICloud is a much more efficient way of storing data and storing our records and files, it is still using energy and it does have a cost associated with it which as a public organisation we need to be aware of. So, we're trying to make it easier for everyone by having that governance in so people have to think about it.  

Claire Marchetti: We're having digital cleanup days and this allow they're widely advertised. We tell people how to look at their before and after and then report it. On average, people are clearing up about 5 gig of data each time. This isn't huge amounts, but if we do that say twice a year and we've got about 1000 people in our organisation, that could add up fairly swiftly or just start to keep our items more, our storage more manageable, within the last 6 months, so December 2025 to June 2026, Historic England had 14.1 million files on one drive. 14.1 million on one drive, not sharepoint, which is where we're supposed to be keeping all our work.  

Claire Marchetti: Over 81% were inactive over the last 6 months. So by having these digital cleanup days, we can lower that number, but also, and this relates to number five, we're by having better governance, IMT are able to move those 81 files into what's called cold storage, which is far more efficient storage. It may take a few seconds extra to open when you do need it, but it's allowing us to access our more used files more readily while keeping costs down for us.  

Claire Marchetti: Coupled with that, we're migrating our record storage from on premise service to cloud hosting. Again, it's more efficient, it's more cost effective, and we can lower our own emissions in terms of that refrigerant used to keep those servers cool, the maintenance we have to keep those servers running and everything else associated with that.  

Claire Marchetti: Microsoft, as I mentioned, they have platforms about free platforms about how much energy you're using. I imagine Google and Amazon have those as well if you're using those, but what Microsoft does is it gives you suggestions on how you can optimize your usage of it. So, we're enacting those. I don't really have any figures for that. Overall, over the last 6 months to the end of March, we are Microsoft emissions reduced by 17% but we feel this was mainly due to Microsoft's decarbonisation efforts rather than our own optimizations. However, it's good practice and it keeps us on our toes.  

Claire Marchetti: Where possible, teams are being engaged and digital archive work is obviously one of our biggest areas and they are using, they've come to us to find out how they can be greener in their digitization. We don't have any numbers in terms of footprints but by moving it over to cloud storage, we're think imagining that that will give us 71% energy savings even if we do nothing. Now, there's aligned with that a toolkit from the digital preservation society what was it coalition which hopefully, there be a link in the chat too which looks at archiving spec specifically and how to minimise its emissions without compromising archive resilience because obviously, if you're digitizing them, you want them to make sure they're available, but they are vulnerable to energy outages, power outages, cyberattacks, that sort of thing. So, it's understanding how to get the best of both worlds really.  

Claire Marchetti: Our IMT colleagues are also collectively training as green software practitioners which allows them to understand better how to do their jobs in a more sustainable manner. This could be running systems updates at low energy usage times so that we don't have to full overexert the grid or it could be running queries in different ways so that we use less energy to run the same query. minimising the number of times we have to have refreshes. All of those sorts of things can be start to be considered and brought into our work. We're also well, we were rolling out carbon literacy. We reached silver accreditation with a carbon literacy project amongst our staff and this allows people to understand better understand their impact and understand the importance of those small behavior changes. So, that's a quick snapshot of what we're doing in IMT.  

Claire Marchetti: It works because it complements a lot of the other work we're doing but obviously, this is we're still getting to grips with it and understanding how we can reduce more. We are use archives by default as an organisation. We love our data. Some of us are hoarders by nature and you know we're encouraging that within Historic England. So, it's how can we manage it better to make sure that we're keeping what we need without compromising anything including the costs of having too much storage. 

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Claire Marchetti: So having said that what can heritage organisations do? Now, I know there's a lot of different people from very different heritage organisations, so I'm going to stay quite generic and hopefully, you'll understand what you can do within your organisation or it will inspire some other actions. So if you review, update, and enforce your information management policies, you can improve your storage emissions, you can improve your virtual emissions, because you won't have duplicates unnecessarily, which will save on version control and you'll be getting rid of the things you don't need because you're clear about it, which will again will save on storage, but also help you in potentially legal situations as well, not keeping hold of data you don't need.  

Claire Marchetti: You can buy refurbished hardware. We don't at Historic England that's a choice we made. But if you're a smaller organisation or you don't worry about that sort of thing, you can buy refurbished hardware either through your IT supplier who will offer you various options or Curry's now have their own refurbished laptops section. Other places like Back Market also have things and they do mice, keyboards, everything like that as well. So, you can really choose what works for you. And again, this is just lengthening those the use of the hardware, minimising what needs to be created new and therefore, minimising those upstream emissions and putting off those waste emissions for a bit longer. 

Claire Marchetti: Obviously, if you have a digital archive, optimize it for sustainability and like I said that the coalition, the digital preservation coalition have quite a good toolkit to help you go about that as well as some wider blogs to look at it if you don't have access. When you're looking for support services or hardware services, etc., you can start asking them about your their sustainability credentials. Now, I'm aware that as a heritage sector, there's probably only a few places where we have the buying power to say to enforce changes. Not like when I worked at highways and we turned around to a couple of you know we were the biggest buyer of I don't know if it was concrete or tarmac within the UK. So we were able to enforce quite a few changes fairly swiftly because we had that buying power.  

Claire Marchetti: But as a sector, if we all start asking similar questions about what our suppliers are doing, where are their where are their cloud hosting services based, what are they doing to minimise their emissions and the storage emissions, what are they doing to optimize our services, they will start to realize that this is important to us and we'll make start influencing those changes if they don't. You can also you can bring it into your tenders as well if you want to. It might not be right for you. You might prefer to work with your known suppliers, but it can also give that edge onto suppliers in a hard competition if they are doing greener ways of working.  

Claire Marchetti: The chance lane project has some excellent clauses if you are a bit worried about those legal aspects because obviously procurement can be quite hard so I would check those out. You can again encourage small behavior changes that might not make a massive difference but it encourages that conversation makes people aware, and hopefully does reduce those emissions.  

Claire Marchetti: You can become a green software practitioner through the green software foundation. You don't have to be technical for this. I have done all but the final exam for it and it's free but what this does allow is for you to understand a bit more about what the technical people might be talking about, meet them on their own terms and understand a few ways of working.  

Claire Marchetti: You can design your website sustainably as well. So, obviously this is probably key for quite a lot of you. There are different ways to design it and some will be inherently more sustainable than others. I know it's quite hard to judge or measure the sustainability of websites and the carbon emissions of websites, but there are a few basic principles you can use which will help reduce them. And incidentally, most of them help with accessibility issues as well. So, if you design your website accessibly, you'll also be likely designing it sustainably.  

Claire Marchetti: And you can hold Digital Declutter days and this can really help with that information management policy by allowing teams to take control of their filing systems, allowing people to go in and really to test themselves, but giving them the space to do so and you can make it a competition if you want who can delete the most or who can, you know, delete the highest number of files, not necessarily the highest number of gigawatts, that sort of thing, gigabytes. Get my measurements right. But these also all of these suggestions often likely have an alter wider benefits as well. So, I'm aware that talking about the climate benefits or the carbon reduction isn't necessarily going to get people going. But if you're reducing your storage, you're reducing your costs, which I imagine is motivated for a lot of people.  

Claire Marchetti: If you're improving your filing system, you're making it easier for people to find what they need, do their work. You trip over fewer duplicates or get that version control underneath. So, it's making it easier for people, you know, deleting your emails or your clearing out your deleted emails folder. It just means that there's less clutter in people's lives. So, that mental well-being aspect and you can do it as a group, as a team or as a whole organisation as well to really get that team bonding going. Right. So, where are we now?  

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Claire Marchetti: Yes, I've obviously focused this webinar on carbon emissions. Like I said at the beginning, they are the most tangible of actions and in general, digital is one of those areas where actually reducing the carbon emissions often has positive effects everywhere else. There are some areas where actually you kind of have to pick which your value is more. Do you reduce the carbon or do you improve biodiversity? For example, I'm thinking about planting trees there. You know, some types of trees are better for absorbing carbon, others are better for biodiversity. So, you have to kind of pick what you want. But this all adds into climate change but also social responsibility. So, if we think about those embodied emissions of our hardware, ultimately a lot of that goes back to rare metal extraction and in wider parts of the world. Are we extracting that responsibly? Are we getting things from place? Are we supporting the supply chain to be fair and just and are we minimising that pollution as well? So that those communities can live better.  

Claire Marchetti: I think one of the troubles with the upstream and downstream emissions especially is that they are the impacts or the immediate impacts are further away. They're in countries around the world, but they do still affect us. Whether it's due to changes in the ecosystem, the weather patterns changing due to land use change or carbon in the atmosphere or leading to instabilities in countries which then leads to instability in supply chain, instability in the food supply chain, more refugees, places you can't go visit on holiday, they do all affect us. So, while that can be a bit overwhelming, if you understand what your values are as an organisation and you can understand where you lie within those, that can lead what you do and can support those wider changes as well and help you with that.  

Claire Marchetti: So sorry, I'm just checking my notes. Yes, a lot of this may seem negligible as well. Like I say, turning the screens off at the end of day in the office isn't going to make a massive difference to your energy bill, but it's will support some change. It will support those changes. And about 5, 6 years ago, someone figured out that if everyone in the world changed their lives by 7% to be lower carbon, we would hit the 2 degree by 2050 really easily. That's probably gone up by 10% but that's not too bad if you think about it's making sure your battery runs down so that you're not overcharging it and the battery lasts longer. If you think about it's keeping those devices a bit longer, 10% longer, that's all very easy, very doable. And if we're able to do it, other people are able to do it. And then we can start collectively demanding better of ourselves, our colleagues, and our suppliers. So, that's the end of my presentation.  

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Claire Marchetti: I hope you enjoyed it, and now we're on to any questions.  

Host: Claire, thank you so much. Absolutely fantastic. Yes, let's move on to the Q&A.  

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Host: We have a few questions there, but please people do use this opportunity to type any question you like relating to this webinar. Of course, into that chat in the center of your screen and Dan and Claire will look to answer those questions as we move on. Well, whilst they're answering the questions, I've got a few more links to put in the chat as well. So, I'll get cracking with that. Over to you, Dan and Claire.  

Dan Miles: Thank you, Claire. That was really good. You really useful. I just wanted to-, I'll get on to the the questions that have been put in the chat for in a second, but I've just been thinking about this. A lot of this work is what you're talking about is actually managing data better, but is and that's part and parcel of managing work better. It's actually part of everyday business and organisational life. I think is that key, you know, in terms of reducing emissions and becoming more sustainable? Is it just building it into the everyday into the normal?  

Claire Marchetti: It really is. And I think you've hit the nail on the head there by saying that in order to work better, in order to be sustainable as an organisation in this widest sense of the word, viably environmental sustainability comes into it. So, the UN definition of sustainability is the ability to meet the current generation's needs without harming the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Slightly worded it wrongly, but essentially, you're looking at three pillars of sustainability: environmental, social, and economic. And what a lot of the work I've been doing recently is to highlight that in order to be financially or economically sustainable, you need to be environmentally sustainable as well. So, we're starting to put those numbers on things, we're starting to make associations with the financial costs, with the physical with the environmental costs as well. So, you're exactly right. It's just it's good business and it's good ways of working.  

Dan Miles: Good. Excellent, you've been talking about a lot of what organisations can do in terms of sort of thinking about managing their emissions and thinking about how they can approach things talking about say the supply chain and things but if a you know say a small organisation is at the start and thinking about okay, I just need to calculate my carbon emissions, I actually all I do is a to phrase but my work is primarily digital, I don't go out on archeological sites. I don't manage historic property. Maybe I'm a home worker, but actually that and I do need to think about measuring my emissions or getting some sort of idea. What would you say would be the sort of the top three simple approaches to start off? 

Claire Marchetti: Top three. I was getting ready with my top one. So, the first thing in terms of measuring your footprint in that scenario, your energy usage is going to be the number one change so the number one emission. So getting your electric bill, if you're primarily home workers, differ publish conversion metrics. So you can put in however many workers you have and they've got a metric for homework. So, you can start to do it that way. It's not necessarily accurate because you might be living, you know, in a commune which is fully self- sustaining versus someone who's living in a five bed really cold oil burning house and working continuously and being the only person there. But that gives you a measure and obviously, we all know about consistently inaccurate versus consistently accurate so that would be my number one point.  

Claire Marchetti: My number two point would be to start thinking about your management policies and what you're doing there to make sure that your filing is up to date to lower those storage emissions and then think about those refurbished equipment as well and making sure that you're doing that. If you do travel around, public transport is the key. I was talking to someone at the weekend who worked in driverless cars for a startup for driverless cars. Even with all of the testing, the constant carunnings that they were doing, they realized that their biggest emissions was their seuite flying business class all the way. So, have a look at that and that will help as well.  

Dan Miles: Brilliant. Okay. Right. Let's have a look at some of the questions. We're going to start with a couple, sort of maybe sort of straight thing then there was a couple of slightly bigger questions. So, the first one I was just looking at you mentioned earlier on about the Microsoft dashboard.  

Claire Marchetti: Yes, so this is a free dashboard which anyone who uses Microsoft can get. What you need is your key, your supply key so they know what systems you're using and what bits of energy you're using and then you use that to open it up. I don't have direct link to it. I know we have to go through our IT suppliers to get it as well so it was a bit more complicated. But what I'll do is I'll talk to our IMT sustainability lead and get them to have the link. They do have a super duper measurement dashboard which attaches to those emissions ones as well, but you do have to pay for that and it's quite expensive. So, but there are a few free versions.  

Dan Miles: Okay, Lovely. The second question and actually something I wrote down as well. It's about asking do you have an email retention policy but my question actually was is even broader about do this Historic England do we have a data disposal policy, you know how does that work because in other parts of the sector you know if you're a museum or an archeological in doing collections you do have that retention disposal policies for what we keep so do we have that for data, digital data and emails for example.  

Claire Marchetti: Dan, I am upset that you have to ask that. We do have a records management policy which details exactly what we need to do and when we need to get rid of them. What it could do is be automated so that it sends reminders to people when files reach a certain age that you know they need to check on them and do we need to keep them, do we not, according to the records management policy. Our email retention policy we don't have and actually it's something I've been thinking about. I take the time every week to delete my deleted emails, but I never delete my sent emails. when does it become you know acceptable to delete your sent emails and lose some of those really key things which you said a while ago but again, if you have a good records management policy where information is in emails, you should be saving that and then you can delete your own email. So, that is something I'm actually going to raise with our IMT sustainability lead to make sure that we can have a clear process which we're all following.  

Dan Miles: Good, thank you. I was just thinking about the emails. I mean I probably most people probably everyone else on this call on this webinar are probably very, very good but I personally use my email like a bit of an archive, it's like a memory jogger. So for me to then suddenly to have you know having that disposal of emails would lose some of my own managing my own work. But I suppose there's probably other ways around it.  

Claire Marchetti: Yes, I think there's a lot of self-discipline involved and making sure that you're working in the correct ways for the organisation as well but we're not perfect. We are going to have those emails which we hold on to. We are going to have those one drive files which we just want to keep just in case but, if we can start challenging ourselves to be a bit better about it and learning how to get through different ways of working so that we're not so reliant on our emails, we can do that as well.  

Dan Miles: Brilliant. Again, I think this is about sort of the same or similarity in terms of the sort of digital archiving or material. So, the question here is not expecting constant use or access to significant historic archive material. So, this is from English heritage guardianship but it equally could be for example schedule monument our original green bank files and our data but it is vital information that needs to be retained. Do you let everyone know what is moving into where so it's probably the process of managing I presume.  

Claire Marchetti: Yes. So, I think yes, if we count everyone as Historic England access, we let them know when we've got a big migration program onto SharePoint and we have whole organisation comes as well as more specific comes for people as it affects them so that they know where to find things, and it allows us to go through as we're going through to say actually do we need to change these? Can we file them better? Because obviously what happens now quite often is that our virtual filing systems mimic our actual filing systems are like physical filing systems where you go. Okay, it's in this route, it's in this file, it's in this drawer, it's in this folder whereas SharePoint works much better with tags and it's more like a conveyor belt with a magnet coming on where you can pull different things up. So, we're taking advantage to change some of that.  

Claire Marchetti: In terms of our physical documents that's not changing so much now. But again, we've got our records management policy which helps us to manage that so we are trying to make sure we see what we need to keep digitally versus what we need to keep physically for our ways of working records not necessarily our national collection archive. Obviously, we need that more widely, I don't necessarily know that we are purely because it wouldn't affect people in that way. Like I say, moving things to cold storage. It takes an extra few seconds to open. I don't need to know that it's in cold storage to do that, you know, it's still there. I still get to it in the same place, and so I think hopefully that answers that question.  

Dan Miles: Yes. Excellent. There's another one here. There's a couple of looking at sort of well iCloud storage and things. So one of them is saying the iCloud storage is still using cube servers and therefore still has a carbon footprint but presumably the carbon footprint is less with I think it might just be less as in full stop or less than something but there is a presume a carbon footprint of iCloud storage.  

Claire Marchetti: Yes, there is. And it's less because it's in the tech company's interests to make it more efficient so that they don't have to put as much money into building or maintaining data centers. So, the more they can fit within their cloud storage, the better. But ultimately it is on servers, it's just how we access it. So rather than having those individual services in our each building or each organisation which just makes it bigger and we're not as efficient as they are. So, yes ultimately if you do have on premise servers and you move everything to cloud storage theoretically that is a lot less, a lot fewer emissions but they do have emissions.  

Dan Miles: And you'd be able to get them to report to you what those are or is that.  

Claire Marchetti: Microsoft are probably currently one of the most transparent of the big tech companies. they will report it. But whether you can understand your usage of it and to a certain extent and I'm aware, I'm just going back on everything I just said. It's so minor our usage in comparison to lots of other companies that you know it's a laughable amount but it matters to us because it's all relative, isn't it?  

Dan Miles:  Hmm. 

Claire Marchetti: So, you might be able to do some sums to get your amount from. Like I say with the Microsoft emissions dashboard, it does it for you. Google and Azure may have the same similar ones. Apple may have similar ones, but I don't know because I don't know.  

Dan Miles: Yes, that's fine. Excellent. Question here is about what are your recommended shared metrics or indicators for measuring emissions reduction or decarbonisation activity within the heritage center? It's quite a big question this one.  

Claire Marchetti: Oh, and that's a really good question.  

Dan Miles: I've left the big ones to last.  

I'm not sure I have an ideal answer because in a certain-, I think it would have to be an emissions intensity ratio because Obviously, we're within archives. We're constantly storing data and we want to keep the data we've already got as well as add to it kind of thing, you know, like a traditional archive or the British library does in terms of books or or something. So, I don't think reduction is necessarily overall going to be a helpful measure because there will it will plateau. So, you could-, we could have a-, right as an organisation we could aim for this but where you could get that emissions intensity so that you're improving the efficiency of the storage so that you could say for every gigabyte of data we will only use this amount of storage and I think that would be really helpful.  

Claire Marchetti: Beyond that I'm not entirely sure because most things you know do you want people engaging with it? So you want number of downloads. Well, that adds to other people's storage kind of thing. Or do you have you designed your website so they don't have to engage like that. They can just take it from your website and stay on your website, and you know, if people are downloading lots of guides, that's really good. But if they carry on downloading those guides, are we reaching new people or are people just are they just bad guides kind of thing, you know, and people need to keep referring to them. So, I feel like emissions intensity ratios are the way to go there and that's what a lot of big companies use as well because they recognize that actually in order to be financially sustainable they need growth because that's the world we live in, save economics for another day, but they want to keep that as low as possible. So, that's another way of looking at it. 

Dan Miles: Just made me think of something else. You mentioned sort of guides. I was just thinking about our historic England guidance. 

Claire Marchetti: Yes, I didn't want to mention it, but that's-,  

Dan Miles: No, no, we still have a-, we have a mix PDF and then web page and presumably PDF and then download would have a higher carbon footprint than web pages.  

Claire Marchetti: Yes. And also it's harder to keep it update up to date because you don't know who's going with bad outdated advice. There's also accessibility issues as well. So, you know HTML is inherently more accessible generally than PDF. I know there are exceptions.  

Dan Miles: Yes. Now, that's interesting. I just think from the carbon perspective, I hadn't thought we need to introduce that as a consideration to when we're thinking about how we produce our guidance and do that another thing to take away. So, there's two final questions. We'll see if there's there is an AI one. I'll leave that to last. But the the last one is an interesting one and this is from a data protection officer who agrees around less impactful digital work is completely aligned with best practice information governance. Any advice in relation to the aspects of this work that require engaging the teams across the business. We love digital cleanup days. However, buying for things like process change which require more engagement have proved tricky.  

Claire Marchetti: That is a very good question and I'm really glad you say that. I did see a big comment in the chat about cybersecurity attacks and emails, but a lot of our data protection does work to reduce our so our team's messages get automatically deleted after 60 days and such.  

Dan Miles: Hmm. 

Claire Marchetti: I think this one is really it's really hard because it does a lot on personal behavior. Like I say, if you can automate it so people don't have a choice or people get reminded, this is up for this has been, you know, here for 5 years and can you check against our records management policy? can start to help people, especially, if you turn around and say it's going to be deleted if you don't, but also making it, and I say this, I don't know what your records management policies look like, what your guidance looks like. making it easy to understand is really helpful because I read our records management policy and I'm actually I'm there going how does it some of it, I can understand but some of it I don't really know where my documents fit in. So, I don't quite know what I should be doing.  

Claire Marchetti: So, making sure that it's free of jargon and you've got really good examples which people understand and are relevant to your organisation will really help. Getting senior leadership buy in as ever if the senior leadership are talking about it and talking about it constantly that will change people's opinions. But other than that, working with teams or working with people on a one-to-one basis. I know that's probably not helpful and it's very resource intensive, but really if you can get a couple of people to change their ways and really understand what you're talking about, they can have that ripple effect onto other people as well. So, I think it's worth spending time with teams to understand their barriers as well.  

Claire Marchetti: So, for example, Dan, you said you manage your email, your emails are your life kind of thing and your ways of working. Well, actually, if I sat down with you, went through exactly how you work with your emails, how you should work and why the importance of it as well. So, talk about that data protection, talk about the legal ramifications as well and the cost to the company, you might start changing your ways because you understand it better and I understand what your considerations are.  

Dan Miles: Yes, it's that-, again, it's that sort of behavior change as well. It's process change and behavior change. It is buy I agree with you. It's buying from executive teams and management but, then actually it is it's a bit like when we did carbon literacy across different teams at Historic England. It worked much better when we did it across teams. So, the teams got together and they then came out and they have started creating and thinking about how they can implement changes and improvements at that level and it had that ripple effect. It's a very good question and it is tricky because it's difficult. I think it's very difficult because the businesses are so big and data management is one aspect and then carbon or environmental sustainability is another and day to day people have to do other jobs and it's trying to build that in it's always tricky.  

Claire Marchetti: Yes. 

Dan Miles: It's a very good point, we have a very little time but I am going to ask you I think we will have to come back maybe we'll have a session on AI another time because it does come up and we did do one for the archaeology-, 

Claire Marchetti: We did.  

Dan Miles: In March which was really, really good. So, pinning on how we can better manage AI use in large organisations through the lens of being sustainable, we could just have two, not even three, two takeaways. What you know your big things how on the top of your head, how would you approach that? 

Claire Marchetti: Train people, train people how to use AI well, it's constantly improving. the things I learned six months ago are out of date now. So, have that training launch go ongoing so that when people do engage with AI that it's there and have clear processes and reasons for using AI. So, a kind of a checklist almost are you doing X? Yes, AI is fine. Are you doing Y? No, don't use AI. Are you doing Z? Use AI but make sure that you're not, you know, you're not trusting it basically and you're reviewing it. And if you have that framework in place, you should be using it responsibly, which automatically means you will be using be sustain, you'll be using it less and or more sustainably, I do have some figures on AI usage but I will refrain from.  

Dan Miles: We'll do that another time. I think it's actually that's a really good way to end this really is having that framework for use and then and that framework can have different considerations. It could be the ethical considerations, it could the training, it's the understanding and the things. Okay, we have run out of time. Just like to say thank you very much for your time today.