Digital sobriety has long been perceived as an activist preoccupation, confined to climate conferences and prospective reports that get filed away and forgotten. It is becoming something quite different: a genuine procurement criterion in public tenders, a progressively mandatory regulatory requirement, and a commercial argument that is beginning to carry real weight in the decisions of chief information officers.
This shift is not insignificant. It means that organisations that have not yet structured their approach to digital sobriety will find themselves, within less than three years, having to answer questions for which they have no documented response. And for those operating in the public sphere — local authorities, healthcare institutions, government bodies, it is already a reality.
This article is not an ecological manifesto. It is an operational guide for CIOs, CISOs and procurement managers who want to understand concretely what digital sobriety entails, what the regulatory framework requires, and how to integrate this criterion into collaborative tool choices.
What exactly is digital sobriety?
Digital sobriety is often reduced to sorting one’s inbox or deleting unnecessary files from cloud storage — what the Digital Cleanup Day illustrates each year. That is a real dimension, but a very partial one.
Digital sobriety in the organisational sense covers three distinct levels.
Sobriety of usage
This is the most visible level: reducing unnecessary data flows, limiting video streaming in internal meetings, rationalising mass email sends, avoiding data duplication across multiple redundant tools. Each email with a one-megabyte attachment emits approximately 19 grams of CO₂ equivalent. For an organisation of 100 people sending 33 emails per day, that is the equivalent of 13 return flights between London and New York each year. These figures do not argue for stopping digital communication, they argue for rationalising it.
Sobriety of equipment
End-user devices (computers, smartphones, tablets) represent approximately 70% of an organisation’s digital carbon footprint. Overly frequent renewal of IT equipment, a preference for new over refurbished, the accumulation of underused devices: these are sources of considerable impact, often absent from environmental reports because they are treated as budgetary decisions rather than environmental ones.
Sobriety of digital infrastructure
This is the least visible level but often the most significant for a mid-sized organisation: the choice of cloud solutions, the location of data centres, the software architecture of the platforms deployed. A cloud service hosted in France and powered by a significant proportion of low-carbon energy does not carry the same environmental footprint as an equivalent service hosted in Northern Virginia — where the majority of American hyperscalers are concentrated and partly powered by coal or gas-fired plants.
The regulatory framework: France’s REEN Act, the RGESN standard, and public procurement
France is one of the first countries in the world to have legislated specifically on digital sobriety with the Act of 15 November 2021 aimed at reducing the environmental footprint of digital technology, known as the REEN Act (Réduction de l’Empreinte Environnementale du Numérique). It introduces several concrete obligations for public organisations and large companies.
The REEN Act requires local authorities with more than 50,000 inhabitants to develop a documented responsible digital strategy setting out their sobriety approach. It requires electronic communications operators to publish environmental impact indicators. And it provides that public service websites must progressively comply with the General Reference Framework for Eco-design of Digital Services (RGESN).
The RGESN is the environmental equivalent of accessibility standards: a set of technical and design criteria for evaluating and improving the environmental impact of a digital service. It covers 79 criteria across 8 themes — strategy, specifications, architecture, UX/UI, content, frontend, backend, hosting. For public organisations, this is a framework that will progressively become embedded in procurement specifications.
Beyond the REEN Act, public procurement is increasingly integrating mandatory environmental criteria. For digital solutions, this translates into growing requirements around hosting location, suppliers’ carbon footprint, their equipment renewal policies, and available environmental certifications.
Why rationalising tools is the most immediately actionable lever
One of the most effective — and most immediately accessible — forms of digital sobriety for an organisation is the rationalisation of its collaborative tool portfolio. It is also the one that offers the best impact-to-effort ratio for a CIO.
The situation in many organisations today looks something like this: a corporate email system, one or two instant messaging tools, a video conferencing solution, a shared storage tool, a project management tool, sometimes a separate intranet, and unstructured internal broadcasting channels. Each of these services is hosted somewhere, consumes energy continuously, generates data flows, and requires updates, licences, and maintenance.
Consolidating these use cases onto a unified collaborative platform mechanically reduces the digital infrastructure mobilised, simplifies data management (less duplication, fewer unnecessary synchronisations), and reduces the number of providers on which the organisation depends. This is digital sobriety by design, not by restricting usage, but by rationalising the architecture.
This is precisely what a sovereign Digital Workplace like Whaller makes possible: internal communication, team messaging, video conferencing, document management and electronic signing, project management, integrated artificial intelligence — all in a single environment, hosted in France at OVHcloud, without data dispersed across multiple providers.
Sovereign hosting as a digital sobriety argument
Hosting choice is one of the most underestimated criteria in organisations’ digital sobriety approaches. Yet it has a direct impact on the environmental footprint of deployed digital services.
OVHcloud, the hosting partner for Whaller DONJON and all Whaller offerings hosted in France, publishes regular environmental impact indicators: Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) of its data centres, proportion of renewable energy used, and carbon neutrality objectives. This level of transparency is an increasingly frequent requirement in public procurement tenders and CSR audits, and it is rarely available from major American cloud providers, whose environmental commitments often rely on carbon offsetting mechanisms rather than direct emissions reductions.
Furthermore, the geographical proximity of data centres to their users reduces data transport distances, contributing to lower network energy consumption. A service hosted in Roubaix or Strasbourg consumes less network energy to serve users in France than one hosted in Ireland or Virginia.
Digital sobriety and sovereignty: two complementary requirements
There is a natural convergence between the requirements of digital sobriety and those of digital sovereignty, a convergence that few organisations have yet formalised in their digital strategy, but which is emerging clearly in the most demanding procurement frameworks.
Both requirements point towards the same structural choices: favouring a European provider whose infrastructure is located in France or Europe, limiting the number of providers to reduce both dependency risks and superfluous data flows, choosing software architectures designed for sustainability and control rather than for the unconstrained growth of processed volumes.
For organisations subject to NIS2 requirements or to the Digital Resilience Index (IRN) framework, digital sobriety integrates naturally into the mapping of digital dependencies: fewer critical providers, fewer uncontrolled extraterritorial data flows, less surface area of exposure to risks — whether cyber, legal or environmental.
What organisations can do right now
Digital sobriety does not require changing everything immediately. It calls for a methodical, prioritised approach that fits naturally within the normal cycle of tool and contract renewals.
1. Take stock of deployed digital tools
How many collaborative tools does the organisation actually use? Which ones overlap? Which providers host their services outside France or Europe? This mapping is the starting point for any serious rationalisation effort. It is also the prerequisite for any documented response to a public procurement tender incorporating digital sobriety criteria.
2. Integrate environmental criteria into the next renewal cycles
At the next contract renewal or procurement exercise for collaborative tools, integrate documented criteria: hosting location, data centre PUE, the provider’s equipment renewal policy, and available environmental certifications (ISO 14001, eco-design labels). This is not an additional burden — it is a response to responsible procurement requirements and the growing expectations of CSR auditors.
3. Train and raise awareness amongst employees
Sobriety of digital usage does not happen spontaneously. It requires concrete awareness-raising, with tangible examples: the carbon cost of an email with an attachment, the impact of storing redundant files, the value of switching off video during audio-only meetings. Simple internal campaigns, shared across the organisation’s internal communication channels, are sufficient to trigger measurable behavioural change.
4. Document and leverage efforts in CSR reporting
Digital sobriety actions can and should be documented in extra-financial reports. Number of tools rationalised, estimated reduction in stored data, hosting location, the provider’s renewable energy commitments: all of these are indicators that feed into CSRD reports, CSR assessments, and responses to extra-financial rating questionnaires.
FAQ — Frequently asked questions on digital sobriety
Does the REEN Act apply to private companies?
The REEN Act applies primarily to local authorities with more than 50,000 inhabitants and to electronic communications operators. It does not impose direct obligations on private companies outside the communications sector, but it constitutes a strong signal about the direction regulation is heading. Furthermore, the CSR reporting obligations under the CSRD (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive) are pushing large companies to document their digital environmental impact, independently of the REEN Act.
How can organisations measure the carbon footprint of their digital tools?
Several methodologies exist, including guidance published by ARCEP and ADEME in France and the Greenhouse Gas Protocol internationally. The key is to distinguish the three main components — end-user devices, networks, and data centres — and to work with providers to obtain the hosting data (PUE, energy mix) needed for the calculation.
Does rationalising digital tools lead to loss of functionality?
Not necessarily — and it is often the reverse. The dispersion of tools generates friction (multiple logins, failing synchronisations, scattered data) that undermines efficiency. A well-chosen unified platform covers the full range of collaboration, communication and document management needs without functional loss, whilst simplifying administration, security and data traceability.
Is the RGESN mandatory for private organisations?
The RGESN is currently mandatory for the digital services of public administrations in France. It is not yet legally binding for private companies, but it is strongly recommended and increasingly referenced in public procurement specifications. Digital providers that can demonstrate RGESN compliance have a genuine competitive advantage in public sector tenders.
Further reading
- Blog: Greening your organisation: how collaborative solutions reduce carbon footprint
- Blog: CSR: the new transparency challenge
- Blog: GDPR, generative AI and sovereignty: what organisations need to anticipate
- Blog: Digital sovereignty: why choose a truly SecNumCloud-qualified solution
- Website: Discover Whaller’s sovereign Digital Workplace
- Website: Whaller DONJON — SecNumCloud 3.2 collaborative platform
📅 Sign up for free and discover Whaller I 👉 Request a demonstration I 📩 Need advice? Contact us!
0 Comments