Managing Sustainable IT

  • Release version: Xanadu
  • Updated July 31, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Managing Sustainable IT

    The Sustainable IT application is designed to help ServiceNow customers manage and monitor the environmental impact of their hardware assets. It tracks emissions, energy consumption, and proper disposal of assets such as laptops, servers, desktops, printers, and scanners. ESG program managers and hardware asset managers can use the application to assess sustainability performance and make informed decisions about retiring, repurposing, or purchasing assets based on their environmental impact.

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    Key Features

    • Dashboard: Provides insights into electricity consumption, emissions, and overall sustainability impact of hardware assets.
    • Plugin Requirements: Requires installation and activation of the Sustainable IT (snesgsustain) and Hardware Asset Management (snhamp) plugins.
    • Metric Definitions: Comes with 27 default metric definitions to collect data on emissions, consumption, e-waste, and energy-star assets. Users activate relevant metrics and configure entities to ensure accurate data collection.
    • Data Collection Frequency: Data is collected monthly and displayed only for completed metric periods.
    • Digital End-User Experience (DEX): Collects energy emissions data from laptops and desktops using 10 default metric definitions grouped under “Dex-Real Time Emissions.” Requires activation and proper configuration of entities and emission factors.
    • Emission Factor Configuration: Emission factors like “CO2 equivalent from Purchased Electricity eGRID” must be configured to match asset locations for accurate calculations.

    Key Outcomes

    • Allows hardware asset managers to prioritize environmentally friendly asset purchases by identifying devices with the lowest emissions.
    • Enables monitoring and identification of the most sustainable or "greenest" data centers.
    • Supports ESG program managers in tracking sustainability performance metrics, facilitating informed decision-making on asset lifecycle management.
    • Ensures data accuracy by requiring correct metric period settings and entity assignments, preventing mislabeling of energy consumption data.

    The Sustainable IT application enables you to effectively manage and monitor the emissions generated by your hardware assets. Additionally, it enables you to keep track of the energy consumption of your assets and their proper disposal after they reach the end of their lifespan.

    As an ESG program manager, the Sustainable IT application empowers you to track the sustainability performance of your hardware assets such as laptops, servers, desktops, printers and scanners, and so on. With this tool, you can easily monitor and assess the environmental impact of your hardware assets. The application provides valuable insights through a dashboard, enabling you to make informed decisions on whether to retire or repurpose these assets. The dashboard also displays important data such as electricity consumption and emissions. To use the Sustainable IT application, you must install and activate the Sustainable IT (sn_esg_sustain) plugin and the Hardware Asset Management (sn_hamp) plugin.

    With the Sustainable IT application, hardware asset managers can make informed decisions regarding asset purchases, focusing on reduced energy consumption. By providing insights into devices with the lowest emissions, the application enables managers to prioritize environmentally friendly choices.

    Using this application, you can monitor your data center's emission performance and identify your most environmentally friendly or greenest data centers.

    To collect data of the hardware asset emissions, consumption, e-waste, and energy star assets, by default, 27 metric definitions such as Energy from solar power, Energy from biomass, and so on are provided. You must activate those metric definitions for which you want to collect data and configure your entities appropriately so that the correct data is collected and displayed. The data is always collected on a monthly basis and is only displayed for the completed metric data.

    For the Digital End-User Experience (DEX), data on energy emissions from laptops and desktops is collected using 10 metrics definitions by default. These include metric definitions such as Real-Time CO2e Emissions by Model and Real-Time Energy Consumption by Asset Location, all grouped under Dex-Real Time Emissions. Data collection occurs monthly.
    • Activate all metric definitions grouped under “Dex-Real Time Emissions” and ensure all required details are filled in.
    • Assign appropriate entities (locations/models) to each metric definition.
    • For emissions-related metrics configure the emission factor “CO2 equivalent from Purchased Electricity eGRID” from the eGRID source via Content Accelerator.
      Note:
      Confirm that the emission factor’s location matches the asset location records. If no emission factor is found for a location, the calculated value will be zero usage-of-emission-factors-in-a-calculated-metric-definition.html#usage-of-emission-factors-in-a-calculated-metric-definition__ul_nhx_5t3_fdc.
    • Set the metric period date to the previous month.
      Note:
      DEX agents report the previous day's energy consumption data (example, September 15 data is sent on September 16). If the metric period is not set properly, data may be labeled with incorrect dates (example, May's data appearing under June dates).