Annabel Holt, Jayden Gracias and Regina Delfin

How are adjacent industries measuring their digital carbon footprints and what can the publishing industry learn from them?

Keywords: Australian publishing industry, carbon emissions (CO2e), carbon emissions reduction, carbon footprint, climate change, digital carbon footprint, greenwashing, HarperCollins, legislation, lifetime emissions, Penguin Random House (PRH), production, transparent reporting

Introduction

As the Australian publishing industry grows ever more conscious and vocal about its environmental impact, with many of the largest publishers producing sustainability reports, the notion of a digital carbon footprint has gained some significance. A publisher’s digital carbon footprint encompasses the company’s internet consumption, the sale of digital products such as e-books and the emissions from their use on a device or e-reader.

George Walkley states that this digital carbon footprint from downstream sources, meaning ‘sold goods and services’ like e-books, is largely ‘out of sight, out of mind’ for publishers. When Australian publishers consider mitigation of environmental impacts in their sustainability reporting, they refer to print books almost exclusively and scarcely, if at all, acknowledge the existence of emissions from digital readers. Yet according to Walkley’s research, the lifetime emissions of an e-book can exceed that of a print book, depending on the consumer’s usage and the storage of the data online.

Carbon reporting standards

The first theme to arise out of the literature on reporting standards relevant to digital carbon footprints, is the use of guidelines such as The Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol, a globally standardised framework for measuring emissions. Scope 1 is defined as greenhouse gas emissions coming from the company itself, Scope 2 includes the indirect emissions from purchased electricity and Scope 3 is all indirect emissions from things like logistics, transport and customer usage of products. Particularly notable is the GHG Protocol Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard in the revised edition from 2015. This protocol advocates for companies disclosing Scopes 1 and 2 emissions, which account for company, employee and major production emissions. It states that Scope 3 emissions are optional to report on under these standards. It is only when a company subscribes to the GHG Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Accounting and Reporting Standard that they are also dedicated to disclosing Scope 3 emissions. However, even while following the original Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard, companies are encouraged to outline whether they are including Scope 3 categories and must make their operational boundaries clear.

The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Sustainability Reporting Standards encourage companies of any size and in any sector to disclose their impact on the environment, community and economy. The GRI 1: Foundation 2021 asserts that companies ‘should address potential negative impacts through prevention or mitigation.’ However, it also acknowledges that it is not feasible for a company to address all identified impacts, such as downstream ones. In contrast, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 14040:2006 recommends that companies outline and disclose all of their reporting boundaries for transparent reporting. It also says that they should address indirect GHG emissions, including those associated with the use of products.

Effects of digital technology on the environment

The way in which a device is used can heavily impact its effect on the environment. This ranges from aspects such as time usage and brightness, to more complicated factors such as what is being displayed on a screen or what the computer is running in the background. A device such as an e-reader will usually release less carbon emissions than a high-end PC, due to the technological strain and requirements needed to function.

A study by Benjamin J. Abraham examines the environmental effects of distributing and playing video games. As well as comparing the energy usage of different sized companies, Abraham uses indie studio Space Ape Games as a case study. Additionally, he experiments with his own PlayStation 5, comparing the energy usage of various games. As an adjacent industry to book publishing, this study shows how publishing houses could collect and release carbon emissions data to gain a better understanding of specific factors that affect the environment. As the report notes, most studies leave out of their calculations the accumulation of overtime usage, an area where digital devices such as e-readers, desktops, tablets and phones are particularly susceptible.

In this digital age, Jeswani and Azapagic argue, printed material is perceived as being replaced by digital counterparts. Though purportedly the more sustainable option, Harrison and Lin, as well as Roy, have shown that e-readers have a limited lifespan, need electricity to function, and require date centre servers to host media before download. While many studies have sought to determine the more environmentally sustainable option, the answer remains unclear. Results differ based on factors such as printing techniques, transport, technology, usage patterns and end-of-life disposal, as stated by Jeswani and Azapagic and by Tahara et al. What is needed, then, is more precise and focused data, which is in turn reliant on reporting.

Carbon reporting in Australia

Zheng et al. state that corporate carbon reporting is integral to climate governance and environmental transparency. It publicises important information about carbon emissions, objectives and strategies, simultaneously leading and motivating ‘corporate green technological’ innovation. Zheng et al. conclude that carbon management should be strictly supervised or regulated under meticulous emission reporting policies, so that environmental impacts can be regularly assessed and areas for improvement addressed.

In Australia, corporations that meet the size threshold are subjected to mandatory carbon reporting under the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting (NGER) Scheme, and the recently enacted mandatory climate-related financial disclosures. The NGER Scheme obliges companies to report Scope 1 and 2, but not Scope 3 emissions. Amendments to the Corporations Act 2001 have mandated that entities meeting the financial year requirements and the sustainability reporting thresholds, as disclosed by the Treasury, are required to produce reports using the IFRS S2 Climate-related Disclosures.

Yet, as publishing houses often do not meet these thresholds, reporting for carbon emissions in the Australian publishing industry often falls short, even though efforts are made. Publishers may lack up-to-date reports, data on Scopes or an understanding of how to source emissions data. For instance, though Penguin Random House Australia (PRH Australia) discloses its reports, produced with a consultancy firm, which include reporting for Scope emissions in line with the ISO 14064-1:2018 standard, its reports are outdated. Conversely, HarperCollins alludes to emission reductions owing to improved practices and initiatives, but lacks categorisation and information on Scope 3 emissions.

With this lack of digital carbon footprint reporting within the Australian publishing industry, this article draws from adjacent industries’ methods for measuring digital carbon footprints to understand how the local publishing industry can learn from them, keeping national legislation in mind. This includes learning how to refine the process of carbon reporting as well as improve and identify carbon offsets in operations, placing emissions at the forefront of Australian publishing sustainability efforts.

Case study: Penguin Random House and Spotify

PRH Australia is the only major Australian publisher to follow GHG Protocol guidelines for measuring and reporting Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions. In a media release from 2022, PRH Australia reports that they will be initiating sustainability reporting on the company’s emissions, since ‘before we can determine where opportunities for improvement lie […] we must first know where we stand.’ The GHG Protocol similarly underscores the importance of fully comprehending impact before being able to approach mitigation and remediation. Bhatia et al. state it aims to ‘help companies understand their full value chain emissions impact in order to focus company effort on the greatest GHG reduction opportunities,’ through following their principles of transparency, completeness and consistency in reporting.

In their media release, PRH Australia asserted that they were seeking to evaluate their complete value chain, including the direct and indirect emission of PRH Australia. However, PRH Australia omits key downstream emissions such as digital consumer footprints in their most recent sustainability report. Moreover, representatives from PRH Australia responded to interview questions by stating that they ‘look to disclose all [their] emissions within scope’ by posting ‘annual reports to [their website]’, but that ‘consumer emissions from e-books and e-readers are currently outside [their] scope of reporting.’ In this way, PRH Australia names Scope 3 emissions in their sustainability reports, but does not intend to go through with fully disclosing downstream emissions.

In contrast, Spotify complies with GHG Protocol Corporate Accounting and Reporting and Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Accounting and Reporting standards by setting their operational boundary to include Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions. They follow through in their reporting by disclosing all of the intended information. In Spotify’s Equity & Impact Report 2024, they not only break down their Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions, but also the percentage of emissions which are produced by consumer use of products and services, and cloud data storage.

Spotify’s report also divulges exactly what methods they utilise to ascertain their emissions data. This includes changes in methodology in their third-party cloud provider, ‘driven by updates to the supplier’s methodologies as well as improved data granularity and availability’, without which they ‘expect [their] cloud emissions would have been higher.’ The Equity & Impact Report was not the only sustainability reporting Spotify released in 2024; the company also hosts a Climate Action page on their Life at Spotify website. This displays much of the same information on their Scope 3 reporting but omits the outline of methodology and operational boundaries. In this way, Spotify presents a simpler report on sustainability for the average consumer, offering a more digestible public relations and marketing image while ensuring transparency of their emissions data.

This distinction is relevant to Fitzgerald’s use of Lamb et al.’s ‘delay discourse’ framework, which suggests that companies may use climate reporting as an opportunity to appear active in fighting climate change impacts for their own public image (greenwashing). According to Fitzgerald, ‘climate talk is in this case […] reinforcing a hegemonic discourse with the aim of maintaining the status quo.’

PRH Australia could be considered as taking part in delay discourse by only producing sustainability reports with their own marketing aims in mind, rather than a comprehensive report that aligns with the reporting standards they cite. Fitzgerald notes that the current development of new global reporting standards, including from the Global Reporting Initiative, may undermine these delay discourse efforts from companies by further enforcing disclosure and transparency in reporting.

Case study: Nintendo

As one of the leaders of the video game industry, Nintendo is in a prime position to influence how other developers handle environmental sustainability. Nintendo has adopted an environmental policy that commits them to ‘preserving a healthy planet’, which means complying with global environmental regulations and pursuing the development and production of ‘environmentally conscious products and services’. They seek ‘continuous improvements’ through feedback systems and identifying which areas of sustainability need improvement.

According to Nintendo’s published emissions, they generated 3.2 billion kg of Scope 3 emissions in 2023, with over 2.9 billion of these coming from the usage of purchased goods and services.

In comparison with other similar-size companies in the gaming industry, the extent of Nintendo’s emissions is extreme, especially when we look at carbon emissions per employee (see Graph 1).

To offset carbon emissions, Nintendo is dedicated to reforestation and using renewable energy. For instance, their European headquarters uses 100% renewable energy, generated from solar, wind and hydroelectric sources. In 2023, Nintendo used 357 gigajoules (GJ) of self-generated renewable energy and 44,521 GJ of purchased renewable energy. However, they also used 86,010 GJ of non-renewable energy, most of which was purchased electricity. Their use of renewable energy increased by 2.5% over the three-year period between 2022–2024.

Nintendo has also been continuing their research and development on their flagship product, the Nintendo Switch, reducing wattage demand over the years. On release, the original Switch used about 12W. The updated model they released two years later had its consumption decreased to 7W and their upgraded OLED model, released another two years after the upgraded model, uses only 6W.

Nintendo’s green advantage over its key competitors, Microsoft (Xbox) and Sony (PlayStation), comes with what many consider to be a technical downgrade. The Xbox One and PlayStation 4, although both released three years earlier, vastly outperform the Switch due to their more powerful hardware. Unlike the other two consoles, the Switch doesn’t use a dedicated graphics card, instead using the NVIDIA Custom Tegra processor with integrated graphics, meaning the Switch cannot output above 1080p resolution on a screen and stays in 720p in handheld mode. As graphics cards are generally the biggest offenders of semiconductors and carbon emissions, this gives Nintendo the advantage of a more environmentally friendly card. As Abraham illustrates, having fewer metal oxide semiconductors and transistors means less materials will end up in landfill in its end-of-life cycle. However, it is worth noting that the Nintendo Switch is generally considered to be in its own category of handheld gaming console and cannot be directly compared to the Xbox and PlayStation.

Case study: reMarkable

Founded in 2013 in Norway, reMarkable is a technology company that produces paper-like digital notebooks for e-reading and productivity, developed with a focus on sustainability and carbon emissions reduction. Their sustainability commitments include transparent reporting, releasing data on plans, targets, actions and data for customers.

The Norwegian Transparency Act, which reMarkable adheres to, requires that companies carry out due diligence operations pertaining to fundamental human rights and working conditions. Companies must account for this by assessing for, and taking measure to prevent or mitigate, negative realised and potential impacts on human rights and working conditions. While this does not require transparency on carbon footprint reporting specifically, it encourages the transparent approach reMarkable adopts.

Meaningful mapping

In addition to constant reviewing of processes and results, reMarkable uses data to improve its emissions mapping and outputs. The company breaks down emissions for devices using the common global standards of the GHG Protocol and ISO 14040:2006 framework, and mapping data from the Continuous Emission Monitoring System (CEMAsys).

Mapping the emissions for the reMarkable 2 and reMarkable Paper Pro in 2002 and 2023–2024, respectively, revealed the following data:

Data on the reMarkable devices, comprised of over 500 components, is collated through careful assessment of ‘every component, where it comes from, and the emissions impact it has’, which is recorded as part of the organisation’s emissions.

reMarkable notes that across the tech industry, the majority of data is derived from standard databases using consulting firms, such as CEMAsys. The purpose of this is to expand the share of primary data reported by suppliers. reMarkable strives to improve the accuracy of database numbers by continuously working with partners and suppliers to refine calculations. This involves organising key performance indicators (KPIs) related to the CO2e data of components, in partnership with suppliers.

In accordance with the Norwegian Transparency Act, reMarkable’s supply chain description identifies two types of suppliers:

• Direct Manufacturing Partners (DMP) suppliers who deliver goods and services that directly contribute to marketed physical products
• Indirect suppliers who supply everyone else.

DMP suppliers are given externally developed tools for sustainability and tracking data in accordance with the Transparency Act:

• Tool 1 asks for information and supporting documents for human rights, working conditions and other relevant subjects
• Tool 2 is for collecting qualitative information on suppliers’ ownership and locations of operation/supply, in addition to governance, compliance, relevant policies and any outstanding violations of the law.

In their published reports for 2021–2023, reMarkable reports its carbon emissions for its offices in Oslo, accounting for business travel, downstream transportation, production usage and the end-of-life treatment of products (see figure 2).

reMarkable does not have any Scope 1 emissions, with only minor Scope 2 energy usage. Scope 3 emissions make up the majority of their environmental impact, with purchased goods and services amounting to 79%, 74% and 87% of total emissions in 2021, 2022 and 2023 respectively.

reMarkable also embraces circularity—the process of reducing waste by delinking economic activity from resource consumption to instead focus on the longevity of products—as a means of negating the carbon footprint of disposal, designing e-readers that can be repaired and refurbished rather than upgraded. Moreover, emissions are considered when choosing components, as well as when considering manufacturing waste, durability, refurbishment potential and recyclability; everything is considered with environmental sustainability in mind. In this way, improving the lifespan of their products, and taking into account their eventual disposal, is embedded into the reMarkable model from the outset, and bolstered by the data collected for their reporting.

As evidenced by reMarkable’s approach to both the circularity of its products and its emissions reporting, which goes beyond what is legally required to map its Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions as accurately as possible, sustainability can be made intrinsic to organisational processes from the outset.

Discussion

Many of the limitations around company sustainability centre on the fact that most of them aren’t totally transparent in their emissions reporting, and that Scope 3 emissions are almost impossible to fully account for. There are also many companies that work across various industries, making it hard to fully track their carbon emissions. The largest example is Amazon, which, as well as creating carbon emissions from worldwide delivery, also exist in the digital space with their Kindle e-reader. They also own Twitch, a streaming platform for video game content. Another example is a company like Microsoft, which exists not just in the console space, but also develops software. This makes mapping their carbon emissions particularly difficult, as their biggest software, Windows, is the choice operating system for PC gamers, and is also tied to e-reading, music streaming and anything done on a computer.

While Australia does not have a policy directly equivalent to the Norwegian Transparency Act, it is clear that carbon footprint reporting would benefit from a similar approach taken by reMarkable. The company leverages policy compliance to align environmental and human rights reporting, exhibiting trusted partnerships with suppliers to further ensure that the process of recording data is completed with integrity, reinforcing reliability and branding. Similarly, rather than using ambiguous datasets with no further explanation on the reporting process, the publishing industry would benefit from increased transparency in their reporting on direct sources of emissions, fortifying sustainability accountability and reputation.

Furthermore, as reMarkable’s use of the GHG Protocol and ISO 14040:2006 produces informed reports used to guide future designs and operational decisions, it is evident that reporting under established frameworks enables emission reports that are comprehensive and informative, and can be used for future improvement, within and across industries. Given that Australia’s national guidelines are readily available for corporate carbon footprint reporting, it appears only rational to follow them and set a standard for reporting within the publishing industry.

Findings

The case studies explored here are uncommon examples of transparency in their respective industries and could be used to map out solutions and spot gaps in the research for other industries, including the publishing industry.

As this article has shown, Scope 3 emissions are the biggest contributors to carbon emissions by a significant amount. In order to combat Scope 3 emissions, companies have taken to tree-planting and purchasing carbon credits to offset emissions, as well as switching to 100% renewable energy—all initiatives that the publishing industry could look to.

It would be highly beneficial for Australian publishers to look to adjacent industries, locally and internationally, to understand how they have responded to the ongoing crisis of climate change and how their activities, particularly their Scope 3 emissions, can be transparently reported and actively limited.