Introduction – the rise in the digital economy

There is increasing consensus around the need to tackle climate change. The UK is leading the way with the 2008 Climate Change Act that enshrines legally binding and ambitious targets for greenhouse gas emissions, specifically a reduction of at least 80 per cent by 2050.

Much is made of the increasing impact of air travel, for example, yet, as Patrignani and Whitehouse observe, current global aviation emissions are approximately 2 per cent, the same as information and communications technology (ICT) or the digital economy (James & Hopkinson, Sustainable ICT in further and higher education, 2008)

Patrignani and Whitehouse draw attention to the range of environmental impacts affecting, and affected by, ICT, notably the production, use and disposal of ICT(James & Hopkinson, 2008; James & Hopkinson, Sustainable ICT in further and higher education, 2008). in their thorough examination of sustainable ICT, unpick the lifecycle of ICT

Notwithstanding these significant environmental impacts though, increasing faith is being placed in technology to actually reduce our carbon footprint, and not just the impact of ICT itself. Latest research in to the digital economy, for example, SMART 2020: enabling the low carbon economy in the information age (2008) considers the rise in the digital economy and provides encouraging examples from the field of energy and buildings as to how the digital economy can be an enabler for low-carbon lifestyles.

Innovative applications of ICT – energy and buildings

Patrignani and Whitehouse correctly point to the increasing impact data centres are having. They are the invisible footprints of ICT needs, hidden away like landfill, “out of sight, out of mind”. And switching-off desktop computers. n a recent field trial of individual energy use in offices, (Murtagh, 2013)show that energy use in office computing contributed approximately 30 per cent of energy demand in the European service sector over the past decade, yet research by Mulville et al. (2014) has found that much of the information technology (IT) office equipment is under-utilised and left on overnight. In our own research at De Montfort University, we found that over 20 per cent of overnight consumption was due to IT equipment and lights being left on overnight.

 

The term “digital economy” has been used to encompass a range of disciplines, from SMART controls for buildings to the personal equipment we all use daily. But “digital economy” refers also to the wider social applications of ICT, notably the Internet, social media and the smartphone

Increasing research is under way to explore the technical side of using mobile phones as consumption feedback devices, and increase energy awareness, for example, at The Institute of Pervasive Computing in Zurich (Lehrer and Vasudev, 2010). Less research has been done to utilise the social media and collaborative potential of Web 2.0 and smartphones.

Future Challenges and concerns: are we getting any SMARTer?

Savings of between 5 and 25 per cent have been achieved through ICT initiatives. Yet, a note of caution remains, the jury is still out on whether the installation of sophisticated ICT control and monitoring systems may actually drive up the consumption in buildings

Patrignani and Whitehouse present a challenging set of research questions for the Slow Tech movement at the end of their paper. No easy answers exist, as it seems there is an insatiable desire amongst consumers for ICT. To that end, the following question is posed, that is “whether or not clean ICT can facilitate behaviour change in users without ever becoming a contradiction in terms?”

Bibliography

James, & Hopkinson. (2008).

James, & Hopkinson. (2008). Sustainable ICT in further and higher education.

Murtagh, N. (2013). Individual energy use and feedback in an office setting: a field trial.