4,190 research outputs found
Climate Change: the Contribution of Telecommunications
Global targets for reductions in green house gas emissions require that all economic sectors take stock and then act to limit and to reduce their contributions to climate change. Telecommunications is no exception and while it can help other sectors make savings, the expansion of and growing intensity of use greatly increases the attributable emissions. These arise from a wide range of inputs, including travel and transportation, energy to power and to cool equipment. While reporting at the level of corporations has improved, it is neither consistent nor complete. For consumers and businesses there are almost no data on the various services they buy that might inform their own decision making and their own reporting of emissions.climate change, energy efficiency, green house gases, telecommunications.
The EU Climate Policy after the Climate Package and Copenhagen - Promises and Limits. Egmont Paper No. 38, September 2010
This paper aims to provide a global assessment of the European Union’s climate change policy after the Climate Package and Copenhagen. In order to do so, the paper firstly describes the climate threats for Europe as well as the birth and objectives of the EU climate and energy package adopted in 2009. Then, the different components of this package are highlighted: the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), the obligations of the non-ETS sectors, the 20% renewable energy objective, the promotion of carbon capture and storage and the framework on environmental subsidies. Thirdly, the other EU climate policy legislations are examined, comprising: energy efficiency, the GHG emissions of cars, the GHG emissions of fuels, and the Strategic Energy Technology Plan (SET-Plan). Next, adaptation to climate change is discussed, before examining the international aspects of the EU actions after Copenhagen. As a way of conclusion, the paper assesses the EU climate policy throughout four main questions: What has the EU achieved until now? What will be the costs? What will be the impact on the European Union? And, is the EU action sufficient
Opportunities and Risks of Digitalization for Climate Protection in Switzerland
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is an important enabler for a low-carbon economy in Switzerland. ICT has the potential to avoid up to 3.37 times more greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions than the amount of emissions caused by the production, operation and disposal of ICT devices and infrastructures used in Switzerland in 2025. In absolute terms, ICT will enable the Swiss economy to save up to 6.99 Mt CO2-equivalents (CO2e) per year, with an own carbon footprint of 2.08 Mt CO2e per year.
This opportunity for the ICT sector to contribute to climate protection, however, can only be realized under optimistic assumptions. In particular, it is necessary that the existing technological and economic potentials are systematically exploited by taking ambitious and targeted actions. Such actions can be especially effective in the transportation, building and energy sectors, which have the highest potential for ICT-enabled (“smart”) solutions to reduce GHG emissions. At the same time, the carbon footprint of the ICT sector itself must be reduced by 17%, which is technologically and economically feasible due to efficiency gains
Challenges and complexities in application of LCA approaches in the case of ICT for a sustainable future
In this work, three of many ICT-specific challenges of LCA are discussed.
First, the inconsistency versus uncertainty is reviewed with regard to the
meta-technological nature of ICT. As an example, the semiconductor technologies
are used to highlight the complexities especially with respect to energy and
water consumption. The need for specific representations and metric to
separately assess products and technologies is discussed. It is highlighted
that applying product-oriented approaches would result in abandoning or
disfavoring of new technologies that could otherwise help toward a better
world. Second, several believed-untouchable hot spots are highlighted to
emphasize on their importance and footprint. The list includes, but not limited
to, i) User Computer-Interfaces (UCIs), especially screens and displays, ii)
Network-Computer Interlaces (NCIs), such as electronic and optical ports, and
iii) electricity power interfaces. In addition, considering cross-regional
social and economic impacts, and also taking into account the marketing nature
of the need for many ICT's product and services in both forms of hardware and
software, the complexity of End of Life (EoL) stage of ICT products,
technologies, and services is explored. Finally, the impact of smart management
and intelligence, and in general software, in ICT solutions and products is
highlighted. In particular, it is observed that, even using the same
technology, the significance of software could be highly variable depending on
the level of intelligence and awareness deployed. With examples from an
interconnected network of data centers managed using Dynamic Voltage and
Frequency Scaling (DVFS) technology and smart cooling systems, it is shown that
the unadjusted assessments could be highly uncertain, and even inconsistent, in
calculating the management component's significance on the ICT impacts.Comment: 10 pages. Preprint/Accepted of a paper submitted to the ICT4S
Conferenc
Mapping innovation in the European transport sector : An assessment of R&D efforts and priorities, institutional capacities, drivers and barriers to innovation
The present document provides an overview of the innovation capacity of the European transport sectors. The analysis addresses transport-related innovation from three different angles. It identifies the drivers and barriers to innovation for the main transport sub-sectors; it assesses quantitative indicators through the detailed analysis of the main industrial R&D investors and public R&D priorities in transport; and it identifies the key actors for transport research and knowledge flows between them in order to detect shortcomings in the current institutional set-up of transport innovation. The analysis finds that despite the significant on-going research efforts in transport, largely driven by the automotive industry, the potential for systemic innovations that go beyond modal boundaries and leave the currently pre-dominant design are under-exploited due to prominent lock-in effects caused by infrastructure and the institutional set-up of the innovation systemsJRC.J.1-Economics of Climate Change, Energy and Transpor
All you can stream: Investigating the role of user behavior for greenhouse gas intensity of video streaming
The information and communication technology sector reportedly has a relevant
impact on the environment. Within this sector, video streaming has been
identified as a major driver of CO2-emissions. To make streaming more
sustainable, environmentally relevant factors must be identified on both the
user and the provider side. Hence, environmental assessments, like life cycle
assessments (LCA), need to broaden their perspective from a mere technological
to one that includes user decisions and behavior. However, quantitative data on
user behavior (e.g. streaming duration, choice of end device and resolution)
are often lacking or difficult to integrate in LCA. Additionally, identifying
relevant determinants of user behavior, such as the design of streaming
platforms or user motivations, may help to design streaming services that keep
environmental impact at a passable level. In order to carry out assessments in
such a way, interdisciplinary collaboration is necessary. Therefore, this
exploratory study combined LCA with an online survey (N= 91, 7 consecutive days
of assessment). Based on this dataset the use phase of online video streaming
was modeled. Additionally, factors such as sociodemographic, motivational and
contextual determinants were measured. Results show that CO2-intensity of video
streaming depends on several factors. It is shown that for climate intensity
there is a factor 10 between choosing a smart TV and smartphone for video
streaming. Furthermore, results show that some factors can be tackled from
provider side to reduce overall energy demand at the user side; one of which is
setting a low resolution as default.Comment: 7th International Conference on ICT for Sustainability (ICT4S
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