Digital Sobriety

The Shift Project, a French think tank advocating for the shift to a post-carbon economy, released a report titled “Lean ICT – Towards Digital Sobriety” in March 2019, flagging the surging energy consumption of the digital industry. The report has highlighted certain assessments at the global level, of burgeoning energy and carbon footprints, resulting from massive investments in transitioning to digital technologies, infrastructures and products. For instance, 80 times more energy is required to produce “a gram of smartphone” as opposed to “a gram of car.” Miniaturisation of digital devices also leads to an increase in energy consumption as a function of separating metals from the complex assembly, during recycling.
 

 
Adoption of digital sobriety as a principle of action, advocated by the report, entails buying the least powerful equipment possible, changing them the least often possible and reducing unnecessary energy-intensive uses. This implies questioning and consequently, adapting the economic and social utility of the consumption behaviours of digital objects and services. This shift in paradigm requires the adoption of a plethora of management tools by large organisations like banks, public administrators and service companies.
 
This includes the adoption of a public database or Digital Environmental Repository (DER), for stakeholders to access and analyse verified data of the magnitude of carbon impacts of the production and consumption of common digital technologies. This will enable them to act upon the demand and consumption of digital services, without hampering their digital transition. The overall goal is to ensure that benefits of digitalisation can be sustainably reaped.
 
From a policy perspective, a sober digital transition entails the following:

• Acceleration of the awareness amongst the public and private sector, including the regular consumers as well as research community, about the digital environmental impacts
• Incorporation of environmental impacts as decision-making criteria while developing policies for the purchase and use of digital equipment across the private and public sector, in both, developed and developing countries
• Enablement of organisations/stakeholders with requisite tools and materials to digitally transition in an environmentally responsible manner, by assessing the environmental impact of their digitally-driven choices, at different levels of control
• In developing countries, undertaking of carbon audits for digital projects for wider analyses of supply-side pressures and GDP growth expectations, in accordance with the potential economic, environmental and social benefits
• Improvement in the levels of consideration and expertise of the systemic impacts of digitalisation in sectors related to energy, housing, transport, agriculture etc.
• Implementation of actions based on these considerations at the global level, given the scope and economic power of the major digital players across the world

 
“Our Lean ICT report brings evidence to companies that their digital transformation is not automatically compatible with their climate change mitigation targets. As digital has become an integral part of the corporate strategy, we have developed tools that are intended not only to Information Systems departments but also to business leaders. This way, the environmental impacts of digital technology can be integrated in the definition of strategies and in the choices made on organizational structures and innovation methods. Creating awareness of the stakes involved is the first and mandatory step. It enables a reset of our digital ecosystems and consumption patterns, a reset that we need in order for them to contribute to an environmentally and socially sustainable society,” says Hugues Ferreboeuf, Director of the “Lean ICT” working group at the Shift Project.
 
India Outbound
March 12, 2019

 
 

source https://indiaoutbound.org/digital-sobriety/