Toward Digital Sobriety

as Greensights project was initiated right after the reading of the Lean ICT report from theShiftProject we think it is worth a remainder, so here is an excerpt of the executive summary of the report from the Lean ICT taskforce as an introduction of the Greensights features.

Context

The Paris Agreement commits all countries to end fossil fuel dependency as quickly as possible. Fossil fuels represent 80% of worldwide energy consumption and are the main sources of anthropic greenhouse gas emissions. Any increase in global energy consumption hinders the success of this historical and vital challenge: preventing climate chaos.

Digital technologies are essential for economic and social development. The digital transition appears to be critical for countries and companies with digital objects and interfaces gra- dually becoming part of every aspect of our social life. The digital transition is also considered to be a key tool to reduce energy consumption in many sectors (“IT for Green”), to such an extent that it now hardly seems possible to address climate change without the large scale incorporation of digital technologies.

However, direct and indirect environmental impacts (rebound effects) related to the growing use of digital are constantly underestimated, due to devices’miniaturization and the “invisibility” of the related infrastructures. There is a real risk of a scenario in which increasingly massive investments in digital technologies would contribute to a net increase of digitalized sectors’ carbon footprint– which has in practice been the case for more than a decade.

Key Takeways

The worldwide systemic effects of the current digital transition are for now highly uncertain, whereas they are often considered as positive ex-ante. With appropriate regulation, digital transition can help to reduce energy and raw materials consumption on a sectoral basis. Furthermore, the energy efficiency of digital technologies has already significantly improved. However, the major global trends of all sectors combined paint an alarming picture. Damaging environmental impacts caused by the explosion of digital technologies can and should be avoided by implementing what we call “digital sobriety”.

THE DIGITAL OVERCONSUMPTION TREND IS NOT SUSTAINABLE IN REGARD TO ITS NEED FOR ENERGY AND RAW MATERIALS
THE DIGITAL INDUSTRY’S ENERGY INTENSITY IS INCREASING GLOBALLY
CURRENT DIGITAL CONSUMPTION IS HIGHLY POLARIZED
THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT OF DIGITAL TRANSITION BECOMES MANAGEABLE IF IT IS MORE SOBER

Global Analysis

The Shift Project gathered a panel of experts to assess the environmental impact of digital technologies, in the context of digitalization, and therefore the rapid increase of both data flows and installed base of terminals as well as the multiplication of digital uses.

Experts focused on the consequences of climate change, on energy consumption (production, utilization) and on the raw material supply (physical and geopolitical constraints, etc.).
The definition adopted for “digital” is broad, coherent with the one retained by key sector stakeholders in their forward-looking perspectives. This definition includes telecommunication networks (access and transport, stationary, wifi and mobiles); data centers; terminals (stationary and portables personal computers, tablets, smartphones, traditional mobile phones, “boxes”, connected audiovisual devices including televisions; IoT sensors (Internet of Things). This scope excludes non-communicating digital devices integrated into cars as well as numerical components of industrial production supply chain.
The conclusions of the work add weight and urgency to the call to “decrease environmental impacts of digital technologies and put its innovation potential to the service of ecological transition” which was initiated by Iddri, the FING, WWF France and Green IT.fr in the “White Paper Digital and Environment” in spring 2018. It also asserts the importance of the problem outlined in September 2018 by the report of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, which titled “developing countries may have much to lose in the face of digital monopolies”.

Digital sobriety

A sober digital transition mainly consists in buying the least powerful equipment possible, in changing them the least often possible, and in reducing unnecessary energy-intensive uses. Digital sobriety is a “lean” approach, which is also a source of efficiency for organizations. Its principle expands to a societal level the consideration of objectives pursued by technical approaches such as “Green IT” and confirms their importance.

The Shift Project calls on companies and governments to adopt digital sobriety as a principle of action.
Accelerate the awareness of the digital environmental impacts
Include environmental impacts as decision-making criteria
Enable organizations to manage their digital transition
Undertake carbon audits for digital projects
Improve the consideration of digital systemic aspects in key sectors
Implement those actions to the European level