In 2017, Sweden passed legislation committing it to becoming the world’s first fossil fuel free country by the year 2045. This means that the country’s carbon emissions will equal zero and society’s day-to-day operations will have zero impact on the climate. To accomplish such an ambitious goal requires cooperation across all areas of industry and government, and many industries have outlined roadmaps to show how they will become fossil free, outlining what technological solutions need to be developed, what investments need to be made and what challenges must be overcome.

In collaboration with the Swedish government initiative Fossil Free Sweden and other companies in the IT industry, CGI has been proactive in creating a roadmap that details how the IT consulting industry will help clients in other industries (e.g. transportation, retail, and energy) identify areas of opportunity for digitalization and optimization to build a sustainable future for Sweden.

The vision outlined in the roadmap is:

By 2045, we will have helped Sweden and the rest of the world reduce its energy consumption to the point where we have a chance of keeping the rise in temperature below 1.5 °C. In so doing, we will also support increased international collaboration. As a result, global sustainable solutions will enable sharper international competitiveness that leads to high growth in exports of transformative solutions (both products and services): solutions that deliver answers to societal needs through resource-efficient and circular innovations.

Helping the country become fossil free is an important focus area of CGI’s daily high-end consulting work with clients in Sweden. All CGI consultants will receive training in sustainable digitalization so they can be proactive in helping clients find areas for optimization of existing systems and suggest transformative solutions—such as artificial intelligence or virtual reality--that will have an impact and contribute to long-term sustainability.

“It is difficult to predict exactly what the road to independence from fossil fuels looks like for each industry as we continue to evolve as a digital society. A few years ago, we didn’t have the Internet, Spotify or Apple music. We still considered that optimizing the music industry meant going from vinyl records to CDs. Today, we don’t have any media hardware at all; we use streaming services instead. That is an example of how an entire industry transformed. This is what we are looking to do to help the industries we serve become fossil free—helping clients optimize what they already have and build a roadmap for the future to become more digital in a manner that enables them to rely less and less on fossil fuels,” says Cecilia Pfannenstill, CGI’s Quality & Sustainability Director in Sweden.

In addition to prioritizing sustainable digitalization in our daily high-end consulting client work, CGI hosted a workshop with Swedish university students to encourage more young people to begin viewing technology as a means to achieve a sustainable—and fossil-free—world.

View the following video to learn about CGI’s work with Fossil Free Sweden:

We also invite you to view other CGI community stories in our video Tech for Good: CGI in Our Local Communities