Carbon footprint of a scientific publication: A case study at Dalian University of Technology, China

Song, Guobao; Che, Li; Zhang, Shushen

doi:10.1016/j.ecolind.2015.06.044

Cited by 37 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 64 publications

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“…They estimate that digitalisation can achieve energy savings for journals/articles with low readership and when they displace lengthy car journeys to a library. Song et al (2016) estimate that producing a review article at a Chinese university requires ∼38 MJ of energy consumption, allowing for searching, downloading and reading several information sources. Reading accounts for 65% of the total, assuming one quarter is on a desktop and the remainder in print.…”

Section: E-publicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Digitalisation of goods: a systematic review of the determinants and magnitude of the impacts on energy consumption

Court

Sorrell

2020

Environ. Res. Lett.

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Background. The contribution of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to a low carbon economy is unclear. Previous reviews emphasise the need to assess the specific factors that determine the environmental impacts of ICTs, but none of them link those factors to the magnitude of the impacts on energy consumption and carbon emissions. Our study aims to fill this evidence gap. Methods/Design. We restrict our analysis to a single application domain, namely e-materialisation, defined as the partial or complete substitution of material products with electronic equivalents. We conduct the first systematic literature review of the direct and higher order impacts of the digitalisation of goods on energy consumption. Results/Synthesis. We identify 31 relevant studies that we sort into five categories, namely: 'epublications' (e-books, e-magazines and e-journals); 'e-news'; 'e-business'; 'e-music'; and 'e-videos and games'. All but one of the 31 studies use life-cycle analysis and employ a range of product-system configurations, functional units, system boundaries and allocation rules. Confining attention to direct and substitution effects, the studies suggest potential energy savings from e-publications, e-news and e-music, and less potential from e-business and e-videos/games. However, different assumptions for key variables (such as the lifetime and energy efficiency of user devices, the extent to which personal transport is displaced and the number of users of material and digital products) lead to very different estimates-including many where lifecycle energy consumption increases. Most of the studies assume that digital goods substitute for material goods and all of them neglect rebound effects-which suggests that they overestimate energy savings. Discussion. Given the diversity and context-specificity of the available evidence, the optimistic assumptions that are frequently used (e.g. perfect substitution) and the neglect of rebound effects, we cannot conclude that e-materialisation has delivered significant energy savings to date or is likely to do so in the future.

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Section: E-publicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Digitalisation of goods: a systematic review of the determinants and magnitude of the impacts on energy consumption

Court

Sorrell

2020

Environ. Res. Lett.

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“…Globally, information and communication technology produces an estimated 1.4% of total global carbon emissions (Malmodin & Lund en 2018). Whether there is an environmental advantage of reading a journal article online will depend on the lifetime of the device used, energy efficiency of the device, reading time and number of readers; one study estimated casual reading of academic articles on electronic devices to be more environmentally friendly than reading paper copies (Song et al 2016).…”

Section: Future Directions For Sustainable Veterinary Anaesthesiamentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental sustainability in veterinary anaesthesia

Jones

West²

2019

Veterinary Anaesthesia and Analgesia

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Objective Attention is drawn to the potential of global warming to influence the health and wellbeing of the human race. There is increasing public and governmental pressure on healthcare organisations to mitigate and adapt to the climate changes that are occurring. The science of anaesthetic agents such as nitrous oxide and the halogenated anaesthetic agents such as greenhouse gases and ozone-depleting agents is discussed and quantified. Additional environmental impacts of healthcare systems are explored. The role of noninhalational anaesthetic pharmaceuticals is discussed, including the environmental life-cycle analyses of their manufacture, transport, disposal and use. The significant role of anaesthetists in recycling and waste management, resource use (particularly plastics, water and energy) and engagement in sustainability are discussed. Finally, future directions for sustainability in veterinary anaesthesia are proposed.Conclusions Veterinary anaesthetists have a considerable opportunity to drive sustainability within their organisations through modification of their practice, research and education. The principles of sustainability may help veterinary anaesthetists to mitigate and adapt to our environmental crisis. Due to their particular impact as greenhouse gases, anaesthetic agents should be used conservatively with the lowest safe fresh gas flow possible. Technologies for reprocessing anaesthetic agents are described.

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“…At the same time, what are the nefarious environmental impacts of such a biblical flood of publications (Pautasso 2012;Song et al 2015) and associated meetings (Li et al 2014;Parsons 2015), and could one ever manage to keep up to date with the topic, when searching Google Scholar for invasive species returns about 16,800 findings published in 2014 alone (not too bad: only about 2/h every day of the year)? The pace of publishing is increasing at breakneck speed: In Web of Science (core collection, 1991-2014, as of October 2015) a search for (invasive species OR alien species OR exotic species OR non-native species OR invasion biology OR invasion ecology) results in about 18,000 items, of which about half appeared since 2010 and one-third appeared since 2012.…”

Section: Literature Citedmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Celebration of British Habitats and a Personal Perspective on Its Birds of Prey

Scott¹

2016

Conservation Biology

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Carbon footprint of a scientific publication: A case study at Dalian University of Technology, China

Cited by 37 publications

References 64 publications

Digitalisation of goods: a systematic review of the determinants and magnitude of the impacts on energy consumption

Digitalisation of goods: a systematic review of the determinants and magnitude of the impacts on energy consumption

Environmental sustainability in veterinary anaesthesia

A Celebration of British Habitats and a Personal Perspective on Its Birds of Prey

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