Digital sufficiency: conceptual considerations for ICTs on a finite planet

Abstract

ICT hold significant potential to increase resource and energy efficiencies and contribute to a circular economy. Yet unresolved is whether the aggregated net effect of ICT overall mitigates or aggravates environmental burdens. While the savings potentials have been explored, drivers that prevent these and possible counter measures have not been researched thoroughly. The concept digital sufficiency constitutes a basis to understand how ICT can become part of the essential environmental transformation. Digital sufficiency consists of four dimensions, each suggesting a set of strategies and policy proposals: (a) hardware sufficiency, which aims for fewer devices needing to be produced and their absolute energy demand being kept to the lowest level possible to perform the desired tasks; (b) software sufficiency, which covers ensuring that data traffic and hardware utilization during application are kept as low as possible; (c) user sufficiency, which strives for users applying digital devices frugally and using ICT in a way that promotes sustainable lifestyles; and (d) economic sufficiency, which aspires to digitalization supporting a transition to an economy characterized not by economic growth as the primary goal but by sufficient production and consumption within planetary boundaries. The policies for hardware and software sufficiency are relatively easily conceivable and executable. Policies for user and economic sufficiency are politically more difficult to implement and relate strongly to policies for environmental transformation in general. This article argues for comprehensive policies for digital sufficiency, which are indispensible if ICT are to play a beneficial role in overall environmental transformation.

Sufficiency in Business

“…Considering the medium-term perspective, specifically until around 2030, the ICT industry represents a rapidly growing sector that will significantly contribute to addressing environmental challenges such as CO2 emissions, raw material consumption and pollution, among others. The literature highlights rebound effects and the need for sufficiency policies to complement consistency and efficiency efforts in the ICT sector (e.g., Santarius et al 2022). While the latter are not yet widespread, sufficiency policies are still in their infancy or even taboo, as we were able to observe in the field.…”

The role of ICT investment, digital financial inclusion, and environmental tax in promoting sustainable energy development in the MENA region: Evidences with Dynamic Common Correlated Effects (DCE) and instrumental variable-adjusted DCE

“…The study findings have revealed that the ICT investment is crucial for facilitating and encouraging the adoption of renewable energy, which is supported by the existing literature [ 44 , 45 , 48 , 50 , 54 , 116 , 117 ]. The study of Wang, Qamruzzaman [ 8 ], Qamruzzaman and Kler [ 18 ], Su, Wang [ 47 ], Santarius, Bieser [ 49 ] revealed that ICT is crucial in seamlessly incorporating renewable energy sources into the current energy infrastructure; additionally, it empowers consumers by providing them with the necessary information to make well-informed and environmentally conscious energy decisions [ 45 ]. ICT facilitates the implementation of advanced smart metering systems, which offer instantaneous information regarding energy usage.…”

Sufficiency in social practices: An underestimated potential for the transformation to a circular economy

“…As sufficiency provides a fundamentally different approach to living compared to the growth and efficiency-oriented society of the past 250 years, the research field is multi-and inter-disciplinary, ranging from economics and marketing (Gossen et al, 2019;Kropfeld and Reichel, 2021;Bocken et al, 2022) to political sciences (Spangenberg and Lorek, 2019) and environmental modeling (Speck and Hasselkuss, 2015), to name but a few. See also Santarius et al (2022) for a truly multi-disciplinary approach to addressing digital sufficiency.…”