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Review
. 2021 Sep 10;2(9):100340.
doi: 10.1016/j.patter.2021.100340.

The real climate and transformative impact of ICT: A critique of estimates, trends, and regulations

Charlotte Freitag  1 , Mike Berners-Lee  1 , Kelly Widdicks  2 , Bran Knowles  2 , Gordon S Blair  2 , Adrian Friday  2
Affiliations
Review

The real climate and transformative impact of ICT: A critique of estimates, trends, and regulations

Charlotte Freitag et al. Patterns (N Y). .

Erratum in

Abstract

In this paper, we critique ICT's current and projected climate impacts. Peer-reviewed studies estimate ICT's current share of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions at 1.8%-2.8% of global GHG emissions; adjusting for truncation of supply chain pathways, we find that this share could actually be between 2.1% and 3.9%. For ICT's future emissions, we explore assumptions underlying analysts' projections to understand the reasons for their variability. All analysts agree that ICT emissions will not reduce without major concerted efforts involving broad political and industrial action. We provide three reasons to believe ICT emissions are going to increase barring intervention and find that not all carbon pledges in the ICT sector are ambitious enough to meet climate targets. We explore the underdevelopment of policy mechanisms for enforcing sector-wide compliance, and contend that, without a global carbon constraint, a new regulatory framework is required to keep the ICT sector's footprint aligned with the Paris Agreement.

Keywords: AI; ICT; IoT; big data; blockchain; carbon footprint; data science; policy; regulations; trends.

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Conflict of interest statement

Charlotte Freitag is an employee at Evenlode Investment Ltd. Mike Berners-Lee is the founder and principle consultant of Small World Consulting. Bran Knowles is a member of the ACM Europe Council, and the ACM Europe Technology Policy Committee, where she leads the standing group on climate change. Gordon Blair is a Research Fellow in the UK Center for Ecology and Hydrology (UKCEH) and is a member of the Patterns advisory board.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Estimates of ICT's carbon footprint from studies published before 2015 The linear best fit line shows the increase in emissions with time, although the growth is not necessarily linear.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Estimates for global ICT’s carbon footprint in 2015 and 2020 (A) Estimates for global ICT's carbon footprint in 2015. (B) Estimates for global ICT's carbon footprint in 2020. Note that for Malmodin and Lundén's, estimates, TV includes TV networks and other consumer electronics, whereas for Andrae and Edler's estimates, only TVs themselves and TV peripherals are included. Belkhir and Elmeligi did not include TVs. Malmodin and Lundén's, original estimates for the ICT and entertainment and media sector includes paper media, which we have excluded here.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Proportional breakdown of ICT's carbon footprint, excluding TV (A) Andrae and Edler (2015): 2020 best case (total of 623 MtCO2e). (B) Belkhir and Elmeligi (2018): 2020 average (total of 1,207 MtCO2e). (C). Malmodin (2020): 2020 estimate (total of 690 MtCO2e). Andrae and Edler's best case is displayed because more recent analysis by the lead author suggest that this scenario is most realistic for 2020. Note that Malmodin's estimate of the share of user devices is highest; this is mostly because Malmodin's network and data center estimates are lower than those of the other studies.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Projections of ICT's GHG emissions from 2020 (A) Andrae, (B) Belkhir, (C) Malmodin, personal communication. Belkhir and Elmeligi judge their exponential scenario as most realistic, while the linear growth scenario is more conservative and reflects the impact of mitigating actions between now and 2040. Malmodin and Lundén, did not make concrete estimates beyond 2020, but Malmodin suggests that ICT's carbon footprint in 2020 could halve by 2030—offering a 2030 estimate of 365 MtCO2e in a recent techUK talk.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Narratives of ICT's role in climate change and the critical assumptions underlying these (A) ICT's carbon footprint. (B) ICT's effects on emissions in the wider economy. The proponents of each narrative are in italics. Efficiency is here defined as GHG emissions per equivalent ICT use. This includes Moore's Law but also higher renewable energy use, energy efficiency of the infrastructure, etc.
Figure 6
Figure 6
ICT emissions, assuming the 2020 level (adjusted for truncation error) remains stable until 2050, and global CO2 emissions reduced in line with 1.5∘C under scenario SSP2-19 Numbers on the blue slope indicate global CO2 cuts needed relative to 2010 and labels at the bottom indicate ICT's share of global CO2 emissions in percent. We assume most of ICT's emissions are from CO2 because a large proportion of its footprint is from electricity consumption and there are no agricultural components. The comparison to CO2 emissions was chosen because reliable budgets do not exist for GHG emissions at this point.
Figure 7
Figure 7
The impacts that trends in ICT have on growth in emissions from data centers, networks, and devices Note that the thicker lines depict prominent threats, thinner lines depict secondary threats, and the dotted lines depict the links between the trends.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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