Page 12 - European Energy Innovation - winter 2017 publication

12 Winter 2017 European Energy Innovation

COMMUNICATION

How green can we make IT?

ICTFOOTPRINT.eu - The first marketplace to showcase European ICT excellence in energy efficiency

Information and Communications Technology (ICT) has and 4% of carbon emissions, comparable to the aviation
become part of our daily life, with a massive influence on industry. With the Fourth Industrial Revolution in its infancy,
society, environment and its future. We are so used to living the demands of energy and resources for computing
in our smart-hyper-connected world that we take for granted systems, data centres, networks and the supporting
a number of digital-comforts unimaginable only a few e-infrastructures are growing exponentially.
years ago.
Making ICT greener is no simple matter as it involves
The good news is that ICT is one of the most powerful different disciplines and requires innovative solutions
instruments for tackling today’s environmental threats for improved energy efficiency. Following the AAA
including climate change and exhaustion of resources: (Assess, Analyse, Act) paradigm, before reducing ICT’s
ICT-enabled solutions could cut the projected 2020 global environmental impact, it must be measured. Performing an
greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 16.5%.1 The bad news orthodox Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is complex, costly and
is that ICT is responsible for almost 10% of all energy used time consuming. It may require months and hundreds of

1. GeSI's SMARTer2020 report https://cda.iea-4e.org/document/10/gesi-smarter-2020-the-role-of-ict-in-driving-a-sustainable-future
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