Sustainable IT in the public sector: the REEN and AGEC laws must be anticipated starting today!

The REEN law of November 15, 2021, includes a first component aimed at raising awareness of the environmental impact of digital technology in France. Since the start of the 2022 academic year, educational programs must integrate training on digital sobriety from an early age. For computer engineering courses, a module on the eco-design of digital services must now be taught to students.

Without changing the obligations for the collection and treatment of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) in force for nearly 15 years, the REEN law strengthens the requirements for the purchase of digital products by public actors, in order to encourage an extension of the lifespan of equipment.

On the side of hardware manufacturers (phones, computers, printers, etc.), the law strengthens the offense of planned obsolescence and the fight against software obsolescence. The text also sets more binding targets for the recycling, reuse, and repair of digital equipment.

State services, local authorities, and their associations must, as of January 1^st, 2023, take into account the repairability index, and then the durability index in 2026, for their purchases of digital equipment. Public actors will also be required to ensure that the IT equipment they dispose of is systematically reused or repurposed when it is less than 10 years old.

Chapter III of the REEN law also establishes a general framework for the eco-design of digital services, including sustainable design criteria for websites starting in 2024. Public actors must naturally comply with these requirements, but also participate in the promotion of the eco-design of digital services within their scope of competence and their territories.

To achieve this objective, public sector actors can, for example, rely on the work of the NegaOctet project, in which APL participates and which is supported by ADEME, whose framework allows for the evaluation and reduction of the environmental impacts of digital services throughout their entire life cycle.

The REEN law provides that electronic communications operators will be required to display key indicators summarizing their commitments to the ecological transition, "notably in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, renewing and collecting mobile terminals, eco-designing the digital products and services they offer, recycling and reusing internet connection boxes and decoders, as well as raising awareness of responsible digital uses ". Among these operators, those exceeding a turnover (to be set by decree) must commit to multi-year objectives for reducing their greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption.

Furthermore, data centers will be required to recover the waste heat they generate through a heating or cooling network (heating of commercial or residential buildings, swimming pools, etc.), or must comply with a numerical indicator (determined by decree) regarding power usage effectiveness (on a multi-year objective).

In addition to promoting these less energy-intensive data centers and networks, local public actors (municipalities and public establishments for inter-municipal cooperation) must also encourage the pooling of relay antennas, while ensuring that speculation on installation sites is limited.

For local authorities, this is one of the flagship measures of the REEN law: municipalities and public establishments for inter-municipal cooperation (EPCI) with more than 50,000 inhabitants have until January 1^st, 2025, to develop a sustainable IT strategy that specifies, in particular, the objectives for reducing the environmental footprint of digital technology and the measures implemented to achieve them. This future strategy must be subject to a preliminary work program developed by January 1, 2023, at the latest.

In other words, only a few months remain for municipalities and inter-municipalities to define and present their projects regarding a sustainable IT strategy. To assist them, decree 2022-1084 was published on July 29, 2022. The objectives of the sustainable IT strategy for local authorities and EPCIs with more than 50,000 inhabitants may thus, in particular, relate to:

• Local and sustainable public procurement, in an approach of reuse, repair, and the fight against obsolescence;
• Sustainable and local management of the IT equipment life cycle;
• The eco-design of websites and digital services;
• The implementation of a policy to raise awareness of sustainable IT and IT security for elected officials and public agents;
• The implementation of a sustainable IT approach for all in order to sensitize citizens to the environmental challenges of digital technology and digital inclusion;
• The implementation of a connected and sustainable territory approach in connection with an approach of opening up and enhancing data.

In terms of sustainable IT, the anti-waste law for a circular economy, known as AGEC, has also strengthened the obligations of economic actors, and of course the public sphere. A decree of March 9, 2021, which aims to increase the share of purchases from the circular economy in public procurement, establishes a minimum of 20% for the purchase of IT equipment from reuse, i.e., refurbished.

The AGEC law also provides for the reuse of treated wastewater (REUT) and rainwater for the cooling of these same data centers.

Finally, environmental labeling on digital products and services must be generalized, which will help all economic actors direct their investments toward the most virtuous suppliers. At this stage, however, the methods for calculating the digital footprint are not harmonized. As a result, both consumers and professionals are unable to compare, due to a lack of homogenized indicators.

This is why the AGEC law provides that environmental labeling must be established according to a methodology provided by ADEME. Assisted by the NegaOctet consortium (bringing together many renowned actors), ADEME has begun its initial work to develop a "PCR" (Product Category Rules) type framework dedicated to digital services to allow consumers to measure, compare, and choose services based on relevant environmental indicators, by controlling the most impactful elements.