The environmental impact of ICT: reducing the ICT footprint and rethinking progress & technology with sustainability in mind Posted by r.meneses The digital transformation of society is having a positive impact on the environment as less paper is being used, and less traveling is needed or not? ICT may have positive and negative environmental impacts, leading to a U-shaped relationship. ScienceDaily. In Proceedings of the 2006 IEEE International Symposium on Electronics and the Environment, Scottsdale, AZ, USA, 811 May 2006; pp. ITU is also developing two reports, entitled Turning digital technology innovation into climate action and Frontier technologies to protect the environment & tackle climate change, to highlight the emerging role of ICTs and digital technologies in accelerating climate actions. An empirical analysis. They first assess the impact of ICT on production processes and then the reaction of consumers to it. We tried to minimize the risk of distorted results by deriving only robust results. Assessments of indirect effects face various methodological challenges, such as the definition of the system boundary, the definition of a baseline as a reference or the occurrence of rebound effects. permission is required to reuse all or part of the article published by MDPI, including figures and tables. In the following we describe the approaches and how they are applied in the field of indirect environmental effects of ICT. These are mainly based on two well-cited studies of the overarching indirect environmental effects of ICT [, Two studies could not be classified with respect to application domains. 4653. There are four key aspects: Electromagnetic compatibility (EMC); Electromagnetic fields (EMF); Energy feeding and efficiency; and Resistibility. Coroama, V.C. In their new paper 'The real climate and transformative impact of ICT: A critique of estimates, trends and regulations' published today by the journal Patterns, the researchers looked at two central issues -- ICT's own carbon footprint, as well as ICT's impact on the rest of the economy. Renew Sust Energ Rev 25:109121, Sohag K, Mamun M, Salah-Uddin G, Ahmed M (2017) Sectoral output, energy use, and CO2 emission in middle-income countries. Lancaster University. By allowing avenues for protecting the environment, ICT through technology has been key to improving society's development and economy. Among other activities, it has mapped all standards related to ICT energy & environmental efficiency (EN, ETSI, IEC, ITU, GHG, etc.). Outline of the Theory of Structuration, Cambridge: Polity Press 1984, 402 S. (dt. Davis, A.L. For example, In the UK, data centers consume about 5% (4 Gig watts) of the total volume of energy that is generated in that country. ; Moraga, M.. (2017) 44 Sub-Saharan African countries. Editors Choice articles are based on recommendations by the scientific editors of MDPI journals from around the world. Information and communication technology (ICT) has direct and indirect effects on the environment. A Systematic Literature Review for Software Sustainability Measures. environmental impact of ICT (including the Internet), coupled with appropriate policy action, is essential for tackling climate change and environmental issues. Digitalization and environment: how does ICT affect enterprise By mapping the potentially harmful impact of ICTs within this network of goals, this framework provides a point of reference for holistically conceptualizing ICTs' negative impact through the lens of policy coherence. In Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Green and Sustainable Software (GREENS 13), San Francisco, CA, USA, 1826 May 2013; IEEE Press: Piscataway, NJ, USA, 2013; pp. Hilty, L.M. The results can serveas an example, for ITU & ETSIin their commonworkto further align their methodologies for goods, networks and services. Telematics Inform 34(4):8595, Hoechle D (2007) Robust standard errors for panel regressions with cross-sectional dependence. The interaction of ICTs and the natural environment can be categorized at three levels: direct impacts, enabling impacts and systemic impacts, going from the most easily understood to the widest impacts (see Figure 1). 2020). Disclaimer/Publishers Note: The statements, opinions and data contained in all publications are solely Moberg, .; Borggren, C.; Finnveden, G. Books from an environmental perspectivePart 2: E-books as an alternative to paper books. LCA and partial footprint are commonly used in single-use-case studies to investigate the relative change that is induced by a specific way of applying ICT. [. In addition, ITU-T SG5 also develops standards that aim to assess the sustainability impacts of ICTs and adapt ICT infrastructure to the effects of climate change within the framework of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including Recommendation ITU-T L.1440 - Methodology for environmental impact assessment of information and communication technologies at city level. A solution to this is the work developed in various . Most directly, information and communications technology (ICT) has environmental impacts through the manufacturing, operation and disposal of devices and network equipment, but it also provides ways to mitigate energy use, for example through smart buildings and teleworking. ; Schnick, S.; Li, X. LCA, ICTem, and partial footprint are by far the most frequently used assessment approaches, whereas simulation methods and qualitative approaches are less often applied. Studies estimating the overall impact of ICT often select a number of the most common or prevalent use cases from various application domains and aggregate the environmental impacts across all use cases (e.g., [, In total, we found 30 single-use-case studies and 21 multi-use-case studies. The digital transformation of society is having a positive impact on the environment as less paper is being used, and less traveling is needed or not? In view of the large number of assessments that have been conducted, the choices made when applying assessment methods, and the variety of ICT use cases in different application domains investigated, we present a systematic literature review of existing assessments of indirect environmental effects of ICT. . [, Researchers use a variety of approaches for the assessment of indirect environmental effects of ICT. In this contest, ETSI has already published the standard EN 303 423 Environmental Engineering (EE); Electrical and electronic household and office equipment; Measurement of networked standby power consumption of Interconnecting equipment; Harmonised Standard covering the measurement method for EC Regulation 1275/2008 amended by EU Regulation 801/2013. collected and analyzed the data; J.C.T.B. 45 Citations Metrics Abstract This study investigates the impact of information and communication technology (ICT) on carbon dioxide emissions for a panel of 91 countries over the period 1990 to 2017. We use cookies on our website to ensure you get the best experience. PDF ICT and Sustainable Development - Springer For all of the queries, we screened a maximum of the first 100 results. https://www.dceureca.eu/. The Impact of ICT on the Environment. 1. Introduction 2. Review Of Literature 3. As a signed-in user you can create content, become a member of a community, receive notifications on your favourite solutions and topics, and access all other features available on the platform. In, Frehe, V.; Teuteberg, F. The Role of ICT in Green Logistics: A Systematic Literature Review. For example, ICT tools such as computers have been used to create a model that can be analyzed to study how certain parameters affect our environment in order to know their impact. Still, I expect the manufacturers of data products to be more innovative and develop products that consume a decreased amount of energy as compared to those that are currently coming into the market. Furthermore, CLC/TC 215 is currently working on additional KPIs standards forenergy reuse factor,cooling efficiency, water usage and carbon usage effectiveness. Based on the response to EC Mandate M/462, TC CABLE is extending the EN 305 200 series with a set of ENs standardizing an approach to energy efficiency in communication networks based on the assessment of network design and architecture. In this regard, some of the international standards developed are listed on this site: https://www.itu.int/net/ITU-T/lists/standards.aspx?Group=5&Domain=28. "Emissions from computing and ICT could be worse than previously thought." Web. This could be partly due to so called 'rebound effects' where increased efficiencies result in increased demand. Rpke, I.; Christensen, T.H. ; Ekvall, T.; Guine, J.; Heijungs, R.; Hellweg, S.; Koehler, A.; Pennington, D.; Suh, S. Recent developments in Life Cycle Assessment. ; Knight, C.P. wrote the draft of the paper; J.C.T.B. The paper's authors are Charlotte Freitag and Mike Berners-Lee of Small World Consulting Ltd, Kelly Widdicks, Bran Knowles, Gordon Blair and Adrian Friday of Lancaster University. The environmental impact of ICT: reducing the ICT footprint and Second-generation methods are applied. ; Hendrickson, C.T. The challenge of preserving the environment, therefore, falls more on the table of the global leadership (that includes governments and policy developers) than it falls on the table of the manufacturers of ICT products. This is a preview of subscription content, access via Several CENELEC technical committees are responsible for energy efficient products deployed in data centres. In: Berleur J, Hercheui MD, Hilty LM (eds) What kind of information society? Toffel, M.W. Existing studies use various approaches or methods to assess a spectrum of ICT use cases in several application domains. The study constructs an ICT index through principal component analysis and tests for the presence of cross-sectional dependence (CSD) in the data. Best practices for reducing ICTs environmental impact and methodologies for measuring products and organisations carbon footprint are already out there: researchers and innovators are putting their fair share of effort in this direction. All articles published by MDPI are made immediately available worldwide under an open access license. As society pressures leaders for a more environmentally-friendly agenda, governments responsible for 63% of world emissions have committed to net zero with corporate net-zero commitments covering 12% of the global economy (representing $9.81 trillion in revenue). Most directly, information and communications technology (ICT) has environmental impacts through the manufacturing, operation and disposal of devices and network equipment, but it also. It is therefore urgent to reverse the current direction of designing bulk software that requires more resources and concentrate on the development of software platforms that will require decreased resources. (1978). Appl Econ 49(40):40834098, Nuroglu E, Kunst RM (2018) Kuznets and environmental Kuznets curves for developing countries. Of the studies addressing the relationship between ICT usage and social isolation in general, 4 demonstrated a positive result: the use of telephone befriending programs , computer and Internet [43,49], and ICT in general lessened social isolation. A study about the GHG abatement potential of ICT in Switzerland showed, for example, that the highest potentials to avoid GHG emissions through ICT can be found in the transportation, buildings, and energy domains [, In our study sample, most of the studies use LCA or similar static approaches to compare the environmental impact of a baseline product system or baseline scenario (representing a situation. StudyCorgi. https://ec.europa.eu/growth/sectors/digital-economy/ebsn_en. The Energy and Climate Change Implications of Different Music Delivery Methods. The Role of Information and Communication Technology in realizing those of the individual author(s) and contributor(s) and not of MDPI and/or the editor(s). For example, Atkyns et al. Systematic Literature Review Protocol for Green Software Multi-sourcing with Preliminary Results. For more standards developed by SG5 on related topics, see:https://www.itu.int/ITU-T/recommendations/index_sg.aspx?sg=5 More info:https://itu.int/go/tsg5. Energy-Related Emissions from Telework. "The Impact of ICT on the Environment." The latter usually apply relatively simple estimation methods to determine a specific environmental impact for each use case (e.g., GeSI applies the ICT enablement method (ICTem) in its SMARTer studies to estimate the ICT-induced GHG emission reduction potential for a collection of use cases [, Three studies have no focus on specific use cases.
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