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Know where your IT footprint actually sits, and which levers are yours to pull.
Nine modules on the estate a CIO signs for: devices, data center, cloud, network, demand, procurement and disposal. Where the impact is created, what you control, how to run a reduction and prove it, and how to disclose it accurately. Every module works through the same three questions, what you decide, what you ask for, what you sign.
6h 50m
9
20 question
80%
Certification
Green IT for Leaders
How the course works
Concepts first, standards second
Boundary, materiality, baselines, targets and management cycles are taught as ideas. The frameworks that formalize them are named once, in Module 8, and dated. The rest of the course holds when a specification changes.
Written for four audiences at once
Every module sets out what you decide, what you ask for and what you sign, with a short note wherever a CIO, a CFO, a sustainability lead and a public-sector buyer would genuinely decide differently.
Two exercise modes
An in-course Northbridge decision you can finish immediately with the figures supplied, and the same exercise to repeat at work when you have your own.
What this course helps with
A large share of the footprint is on no bill
Manufacturing impact is incurred before a device is switched on and never appears on an energy invoice. In the worked estate it is 36% of the total — so an organization measuring electricity is measuring about two thirds and calling it the whole.
The biggest levers are signatures, not projects
Carbon that fell while energy did not. A rate reported without a total. A boundary that quietly excludes the largest component. Module 8 covers how each is caught.
Claims that do not survive review
Carbon that fell while energy did not. A rate reported without a total. A boundary that quietly excludes the largest component. Module 8 covers how each is caught.
Who this is for
- CIOs, CTOs and IT directors accountable for the estate and its suppliers
- CFOs, COOs and board members funding IT and answering for what is disclosed
- Public-sector IT leadership working within procurement rules
- Sustainability leads who need IT to produce figures that survive assurance
- No technical background and no prior course assumed
Related courses:
This course covers the estate and leaves workload depth to the practitioner track. For AI specifically, see Green AI for Executives. For starting and scaling a program, see Scaling Green AI and Software. For the data estate, see Green Data Practitioner.
What you will work with
The estate map
A first-pass footprint built in about two weeks from four sources you already have (asset register, cloud invoices, energy bills and procurement records), with every figure marked as an estimate or a measurement.
The refresh and disposal card
What one extra year of device life is worth, why the same policy can be wrong for servers, and the five things a disposal contract must guarantee.
The lever ranking and savings register
Impact against control and time to effect, one owner per ton, and the guard that stops a saving decaying once attention moves on.
The claim checklist
Metric, boundary, method, basis, date and data quality — plus the four ways an IT sustainability claim typically fails, and the single question that exposes an intensity change described as efficiency.
What you will be able to do
Course Lessons
The full course
01
The Prompt Footprint
Introduces the five-dimensional view: cost, carbon, energy, water, embodied hardware. Establishes SCI for AI as the standards anchor. Positions the regulatory landscape (CSRD, EU AI Act, procurement disclosure) as the why now for Footprint literacy.
Before You Begin
Modules
02
The Specification Lever
How prompt intent quality drives Footprint. The GSF Intent Framework introduced. Trade-offs: over-specification wastes tokens, under-specification wastes retries. Worked examples across capability tiers.
Modules
03
The Structure Lever
Prompt organization: system messages, few-shot examples, output constraints, formatting instructions. Where structure earns its tokens and where it doesn't.
Modules
04
The Reasoning Depth Lever
When to invoke chain-of-thought, tree-of-thought, extended reasoning modes; when not to. The GSF Reasoning Budget: task-class taxonomy for reasoning depth decisions.
Modules
05
The Model Selection Lever
The most consequential single decision in inference efficiency. Capability tiers and routing decisions. The GSF Model Fit Test protocol. Same task across tiers, measured.
Halfway Check-in
Modules
06
The Orchestration Lever
Where agents leak resource: tool selection, chain depth, redundant retrieval, missing caching. Token budgets as a first-class design constraint. Case study from the supply-chain agent paper (70–90% workflow-level savings).
Modules
07
Measuring the Prompt Footprint
Hands-on demonstrations with EcoLogits, CodeCarbon, AI Energy Score. Producing numbers a CSRD auditor can read. The measurement chain from token count to gCO₂eq.
Modules
08
Procurement & Disclosure
What to ask your LLM vendor. What CSRD and the EU AI Act will require. The GSF Procurement question bank organized by Footprint dimension.
Modules
09
Course Completion
50 questions, 120 minutes. Pass Marks: 85%
Final Assessment
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Assessment & Certification
Time to complete