Atos opens doors on decarbonization centers

Atos is stepping up its momentum in the decarbonization space with the launch of a string of dedicated Centers of Excellence across its international operations.

The company is opening five locations across Europe (Barcelona, London, Lyon, Munich and Paris) and two in North America (Montreal and New York), with further sites in India and Singapore set to open later this year.

The centers will provide a blend of decarbonization strategy consulting services (built around the acquired EcoAct operation), digital advisory and technology platforms, and what it calls “nature-based solutions” to support carbon offsetting initiatives.

Last year’s EcoAct acquisition brought a team of 150 dedicated net zero and climate experts to drive the discussion with business leaders and ESG teams on their carbon reduction strategies. This team, which continues to be led by EcoAct founder Thierry Fornas, is expected to scale up to 230 by the end of 2021 and to 500 by the end of 2022.

On the technology side, Atos also formally launched two new platform plays designed to tackle the critical challenges of emissions data analysis and carbon offsetting.

The Atos Carbon Dashboard is designed to serve as a single reporting platform, that work in conjunction with existing tools to take out the huge amount of manual effort required for emissions reporting and data analysis across the value chain. The second platform, Going4Zero, is aimed at providing businesses with a “one-stop-shop” to better manage their carbon offsetting activities from accessing carbon credits online and getting real-time information on their project investments.

PAC believes that Atos is one of the front-runners among the IT services vendors in building out their portfolio and skills to support the decarbonization agenda, be it in helping the enterprise IT function to drive efficiency through cloud migration, through to building and implementing technology designed to support decarbonization across other areas of the organization.

The company can draw upon an already diverse set of references and case studies in this regard, from its role in the development of a carbon-neutral factory for drinks manufacturer Innocent, through to the deployment of digital twins to drive efficiency and effectiveness in the way that manufacturers and utility companies manage and optimize their assets.

Atos expects its decarbonization activities to drive 1% of its global growth target by 2025. And while its dedicated resources around the sustainability topic are relatively small when compared to the armies of experts it has on topics such as SAP or digital workplace, the crossover between decarbonization and digital transformation is at an early stage of development. But it will grow rapidly - the company ran a record number of “digital decarbonization assessments” with customers last year.

Atos has walked the walked internally, moving forward its own target for achieving net zero status to 2028. It has a lot of insight to share in how it is working to drive the all-important cultural change across the organization through initiatives such as the introduction of internal carbon pricing last year.

Atos is not the only IT services supplier targeting the digital decarbonization opportunity, but it has been quicker out of the blocks than most.