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

To avoid catastrophic consequences from climate change, all sectors of the global economy, including Information Communication Technology (ICT), must keep their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in line with the Paris Agreement.

Through our analysis, we have found broad agreement on the size of ICT’s current carbon footprint, yet there are a range of different views with regard to ICT’s future role in climate change, both in terms of ICT’s own carbon footprint and its effect on the wider economy’s emissions

ICT is estimated at ca. 1.8%–2.8% of global GHG emissions in 2020. Estimates of ICT’s emissions in 2020 vary between 0.8 and 2.3 GtCO2e.

Across studies, roughly 23% of ICT’s total footprint is from embodied emissions,

Share of embodied emissions from user devices is much higher than networks and data centers.
"Unlike networks and data centers, user devices are only used for parts of the day and use less electricity, but are exchanged often, especially in the case of smartphones."

The carbon footprint for ICT, including TVs and other consumer electronics, rises to 1.2–2.2 GtCO2e (2.1%–3.9% of global GHG emissions) in 2020 with ca. 30% coming from embodied emissions and 70% from use phase emissions.

However, efficiency improvements might be coming to an end—a view echoed by some of the experts we have consulted (e.g., Peter Garraghan, Belkhir, Andrae). As transistors have shrunk in size and increased in speed, they have begun to heat up; this led to manufacturers putting a speed limit on processing in 2004. The problem now is ‘‘quantum entanglement’’ where transistor layers become so thin that electrons jump between them, making transistors increasingly unreliable.

Furthermore, Masanet et al. reported that data centers’ operational energy consumption has increased only marginally from 194 TWh in 2010 to 205 TWh in 2020 despite global data center compute instances increasing by 550% over the same time period—showing the effectiveness of efficiency improvements in ICT.

There is some evidence suggesting that the average lifetime of smartphones is increasing too,10 which will decrease the yearly embodied carbon associated with people replacing their smartphones.

In their report SMARTer 2030, the Global eSustainability Initiative,12 which represents ICT companies, claim that ICT could save 9.1 GtCO2e in 2020 and 12.08 GtCO2e in 2030 in other industries, such as health, education, buildings, agriculture, transport, and manufacturing—mostly due to improved efficiency. This would allow a 20% reduction of global CO2e emissions by 2030, holding emissions at 2015 levels and decoupling economic growth from emissions growth.

The GeSI12 report is sponsored by several large ICT companies and there is a lack of transparency in their analysis, raising concerns over possible conflict of interest. So far, there is little evidence that these predictions have come true. History has shown us that growth in the global economy and its carbon footprint has continuously risen, even with ICT creating efficiencies in other industries.

It is difficult to quantify the exact balance of ICT-enabled savings and increased emissions, but one clue is that while video traffic has been expanding rapidly to the extent that it is one of the main contributors of internet traffic,22 emissions from flights were simultaneously increasing (save for pandemics).27 Therefore, ICT only enables efficiencies in other industries if it completely substitutes more traditional carbon-intensive activities rather than being offered in addition to them.

With unlimited growth in energy demand, even the relatively small carbon footprint from renewable energy compared to fossil fuel would add up significantly. In addition, there might be limits to the amount of renewable energy that can be generated with present technology, such as the availability of silver, which is used in photovoltaic panels.

Thus, while a shift to more renewable energy is crucial, it does not provide an unlimited supply of energy for ICT to expand into without consequences.

To meet climate change targets, the ICT sector needs to drastically decrease its own emissions and deliver vast savings in other sectors. Despite some variability in estimates, research studies reviewed here agree that ICT is responsible for several percent of global GHG emissions and that its footprint has grown until recently. The world needs to reduce its GHG emissions to stay within 1.5+C warming.

There are three reasons to believe that ICT’s emissions are higher than estimated and that they are going to increase.

Reason 1: rebound effects have occurred since the beginning of ICT, and they will likely continue without intervention.

Reason 2: current studies of ICT’s carbon footprint make several important omissions surrounding the growth trends in ICT.

Reason 3: there is significant investment in developing and increasing uptake of blockchain, IoT and AI.

ICT is a central pillar of Europe’s climate strategy. Under the EC’s Green Deal, Europe is committed to becoming carbon neutral by 2050, and climate neutral later this century.87 The EC use the term ‘‘carbon neutral’’ to refer to no net emissions of carbon dioxide, and the term ‘‘climate neutral’’ to refer to no net emissions of GHG emissions.

As part of Europe’s New Circular Economy Action Plan, the EC plans to put forward a ‘‘Circular Electronics Initiative’’ by the end of 2021 to improve the lifespan, repairability, and recyclability of ICT products.93

Except for this Circular Electronics Initiative, which will likely include a reward scheme for consumers who recycle their old devices,94 the Green Deal is notable for its lack of clear incentivization or enforcement mechanisms regarding decarbonization of ICT.

The new ITU standard encourages ICT companies to become net zero by 2050. In collaboration with GSMA, GeSI, and SBTi, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU),32 a UN agency focused on the ICT industry, released a new standard in February 2020. The standard aims to reduce ICT’s GHG emissions by 45% by 2030, and net zero by 2050, in line with limiting global warming to 1.5 C. The scope of ITU’s recommendation includes ‘‘mobile networks, fixed networks, data centers, enterprise networks, and end-user devices, but excludes ICT services.’’

The full climate impacts of ICT need to be considered systematically, accounting for end-to-end life cycles and supply chain emissions. It is critical that complete and accurate estimates are used to guide climate policy making and target setting within the sector.

While ICT offers opportunities to enable reductions in CO2 emissions in other sectors, evidence does not support their ability to achieve the significant carbon savings required by 2050. It is important not to overhype ICT’s potential to reduce emissions across the economy, thus additional research is sorely needed to provide robust estimates to policy makers.

There is a pressing need to devise a strategy for constraining consumption of ICT so that efficiency improvements lead to actual emissions reductions and enable productivity to be maintained in a carbon-constrained world. It is likely that unabated growth in demand for ICT will more than offset the emissions saved through improved efficiency of these technologies.

We have outlined below five criteria specifically for ICT sector targets, all of which will need to pervade the ICT sector and be subjected to tough, well-resourced, and independent scrutiny:

1. targets should be inclusive of scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions
2. reduction trajectories should be in line with IPCC recommendations for limiting warming to 1.5 °C
3. where transition to renewable energy is part of the decarbonization pathway, a careful test should be applied that the renewables are provably additional
4. emissions offsets need to pass tests of permanence, verifiability, and additionality
5. where ‘‘net zero’’ or ‘‘carbon neutral’’ targets are announced, these should be disaggregated into an emissions reduction component and an offsetting component so that offsets are not allowed to replace reduction responsibilities
6. emission reduction targets should not be replaced by enablement claims due to the risk of rebound effects

Historically we can be sure that four phenomena have gone hand in hand: ICT has become dramatically more efficient; ICT’s footprint has risen to account for a significant proportion of global emissions; ICT has delivered increasingly wide-ranging efficiency and productivity improvements to the global economy; and global emissions have risen inexorably despite this.

All analyses reviewed in this report concur that ICT is not on a path to reduce emissions in line with recommendations from climate science unless additional steps are taken by the sector, or legislators, to ensure that this happens. Prevalent policy emphasis on efficiency improvements, use of renewables and circular electronics is likely insufficient to reverse ICTs growth in emissions.

Based on the evidence available, it is also key that regulators move away from the presumption that ICT saves more emissions than it produces—at the very least it would seem unsafe to assume that ICT efficiencies bring about carbon savings by default.

The argument of enablement simply does not exempt the ICT sector from addressing its own emissions, and the sector could certainly do more to understand its enablement and rebound effects.

To ensure current technologies have a truly positive impact on the environment, the climate emergency requires a global constraint such as a carbon cap on extraction, a price on carbon emissions, or a constraint on consumption, to rule out rebounds in emissions. With this in place, the ICT-enabled carbon reductions could be realized, and the ICT industry could become a vital sector for the transition to a net zero world.

Across studies, roughly 23% of ICT’s total footprint is from embodied emissions, yet the share of embodied emissions for user devices specifically is ca. 50%. This is because, unlike networks and data centers, user devices are only used for parts of the day and use less electricity, but are exchanged often, especially in the case of smartphones.