Green ICT: What would be the cost of doing nothing?

Purpose & Audience

Sustainability requires innovation in different regions of the world. ICT infrastructures have been identified as a key element in global strategies for sustainability across society. The ICT sector is estimated to account for around 2% of the global GHG footprint (equivalent level to the airline industry) but has the potential to reduce global GHG emissions by 16.5% by 2020, amounting to $1.9 trillion in gross energy and fuel savings and a reduction of 9.1 GtCO2e of GHG. This is seven times the size of the ICT sector’s own GHG footprint by 2020. This benefit will happen by the further design and development of smart user technologies, smart grids, smart buildings, smart transportation … to monitor and control energy use and to globally contribute to smarter cities, communities and society. This session, built on recent sessions organized worldwide on sustainability and green ICT, took a different and disruptive approach, "Green ICT: What would be the cost of doing nothing?"

Key message(s):

The major key messages addressed during the session were as follows:
• ICT is a mandatory path for the development of low carbon economy.
• Energy Efficiency (EE) is a necessity and an opportunity for the ICT industry.
• The ambition of the GreenTouch initiative and consortium (www.greentouch.org) is to "deliver by 2015 architectures, specifications and roadmap, and demonstrate key technologies to increase network energy efficiency by a factor 1000 compared to 2010."
• The ICT networks, PCs and data centers have grown from representing 3.9% of the worldwide electricity consumption in 2007 to 4.6% in 2012. Periodic updates (e.g. every 5 years) of these estimates are useful to see where we are headed and evaluate whether efforts to improve energy efficiency are being embraced.
• With the growth in customer numbers and greater demand for data services, it is important that the ICT sector plays its part in reducing energy emissions and its carbon footprint to the extent possible. However, the ICT industry also has a huge role to play in helping its customers reduce energy and fuel consumption and therefore their carbon footprint, through services such as smart grids, smart logistics, conferencing and cloud-hosting facilities.

Summary

The session was attended by 35+ participants, and helped to develop a deeper, mutual understanding among the GreenTouch initiative participants, the GeSI participants, the EC projects (e.g. TREND) participants and general audience. Attendees learned more about latest developments in energy efficiency in the ICT sector, enabling them to identify potential synergies and convergence points. It must also be noted that both Didier Bourse and Alice Valvodova could not join the session due to personal issues. The session was kicked-off by Marco Ajmone Marsan who introduced the speakers and panelists: Philippe Richard, Piet Demeester, Nicola Woodhead, Jaafar Elmirghani and Klaus Wuenstel.

Recommendations

ICT energy efficiency is clearly one of the grand challenges for the decade and requires a significant effort in the different regions worldwide, and thus deserves quite a prominent position in the context of the forthcoming EC H2020 program and projects. More information about this session may be found at: http://www.fi-dublin.eu/green-ict/