# What does that really tell us? Interpreting numbers in sustainability reports

- Institution: CERN
- Speaker: Romain Jacob
- Year: 2026
- Language: English
- Subjects: Mathematics
- Source: [CERN](https://videos.cern.ch/record/3025574)
- Licence: [CERN](https://copyright.web.cern)
- Who can watch: Tweens profiles and older (sources give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the source's own words)

It is encouraging to see more and more studies published about the environmental footprint of the ICT sector. Unfortunately, the outcomes of those studies are often misinterpreted. In fact, one can look at the footprint of a product or activity in many different ways which all make sense but serve different purposes. It is very easy to mistake one purpose for another and thus derive completely wrong conclusions, which may lead to harmful—albeit well-intentioned—decision-making.

I believe we can avoid those misunderstandings by clarifying the different methodological choices and their corresponding purpose. This mental framework helps draw correct conclusions from the growing corpus of sustainability studies. In this presentation, I summarize what I currently see as three of the most important methodological choices. Then, I'll discuss a couple of examples from computer networks (my area of research) to illustrate how easy it is to misinterpret footprint numbers.

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## Lectures

1. [What does that really tell us? Interpreting numbers in sustainability reports](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/learn/cern/3025574/f21b9adbd1d5), 27 min (CERN's player)