Caldwell highlights Council IT carbon footprint

There have been calls for more environmentally-friendly IT usage from Edinburgh Council.

At the last two Governance, Risk and Best Value committees, Councillor Jack Caldwell has highlighted and requested action on the City of Edinburgh Council's carbon output from IT services.

Since the request, energy consumption monitoring has been introduced and a number of devices of the 20,000-employee local authority now automatically shut down at 10pm if no user input is detected.

Furthermore, the Council has agreed that external IT services should be monitoring the carbon output of data centres the Council utilises, and greener targets will be baked into new contracts going forward.

This follows a previous Lib Dem Annual Council Budget in 2023, where Councillors agreed to reduce the average tempeture in Council buildings to reduce energy consumption, and to roll out more solar panels across the estate.