The real climate and transformative impact of ICT: A critique of estimates, trends, and regulations

Freitag, Charlotte; Berners-Lee, Mike; Widdicks, Kelly; Knowles, Bran; Blair, Gordon S.; Friday, Adrian

doi:10.1016/j.patter.2021.100340

Cited by 204 publications

(129 citation statements)

References 49 publications

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“…Recently, a method was developed to analyze the impacts of materials on a national level [61][62][63], and extended to assess the impacts of any intermediate sector and region for any impact category of any MRIO database [10]. It was applied to assess the environmental and socioeconomic impacts of global material production [10,[64][65][66][67][68][69], plastics production [64], ICT manufacturing [68], and the EU's food consumption [69]. However, an application to the G20's material production and consumption is missing in the scientific literature despite its importance for policy making, given the G20's key role in collective action to promote sustainable material production and consumption.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although the inclusion of downstream impacts is optional in scope 3 assessment [26], downstream emissions are critical for fossil resources as their combustion causes the vast majority of global GHG emissions [70,71]. Previous studies [10,[64][65][66][67][68][69] have tracked the use of materials (and the impacts related to their production) in the downstream chain, such as to analyze which fraction of the emissions of steel production were attributed to steel used in construction. Also, one study has allocated GHG emissions of global plastics production to the type of fossil fuel that is combusted [64].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Improved sustainability assessment of the G20’s supply chains of materials, fuels, and food

Cabernard

Pfister

Hellweg

2022

Environ. Res. Lett.

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Transparency in global value chains of materials, fuels, and food is critical for the implementation of sustainability policies. Such policies should be led by the G20, who represent more than 80% of global material, fuel, and food consumption. Multi-regional input-output (MRIO) analysis plays an important role for consumption-based assessment, including supply chains and their environmental impacts. However, previous accounting schemes were unable to fully assess the impacts of materials, fuels, and food. To close this gap, we provide an improved method to map key aspects of sustainability along value chains of materials, fuels, and food. The results show that the rise in global coal-related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions between 1995 and 2015 was driven by the G20’s metals and construction materials industry. In 2015, the G20 accounted for 96% of global coal-related GHG emissions, of which almost half was from the extraction and processing of metals and construction materials in China and India. Major drivers include China’s rising infrastructure and exports of metals embodied in machinery, transport and electronics consumed by other G20 members. In 2015, the vast majority (70–95%) of the GHG emissions of metals consumed by the EU, USA, Canada, Australia, and other G20 members were emitted abroad, mostly in China. In contrast, hotspots in the impact displacement of water stress, land-use related biodiversity loss, and low-paid workforce involve the G20’s food imports from non-G20 members. Particularly high-income members have contributed to the G20’s rising environmental footprints by their increasing demand for materials, food and fuels extracted and processed in lower-income regions with less strict environmental policies, higher water stress and more biodiversity loss. Our results underline the G20’s importance of switching to renewable energy, substituting high-impact materials, improving supply chains, and using site-specific competitive advantages to reduce impacts on water and ecosystems.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Improved sustainability assessment of the G20’s supply chains of materials, fuels, and food

Cabernard

Pfister

Hellweg

2022

Environ. Res. Lett.

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“…• We describe how following best practices significantly reduced the energy consumption and carbon footprint of training compared to the faulty estimates commonly cited [2,6,7].…”

Section: Figure 1 Reduction In Gross Co 2 Emissions Since 2017 From A...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…GLaM is a new language model using 7x more parameters than GPT-3. It is a mixture of experts model that only activates experts selectively based on the input so that no more than 95B parameters 7 The 2017 NVIDIA V100 is optimized for ML.…”

Section: Case Study 2: Gpt-3 Vs Glammentioning

confidence: 99%

The Carbon Footprint of Machine Learning Training Will Plateau, Then Shrink

Patterson¹,

Hölzle²,

Le³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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<div> <div> <div> <p>Machine Learning (ML) workloads have rapidly grown in importance, but raised concerns about their carbon footprint. Four best practices can reduce ML training energy by up to 100x and CO2 emissions up to 1000x. By following best practices, overall ML energy use (across research, development, and production) held steady at <15% of Google’s total energy use for the past three years. If the whole ML field were to adopt best practices, total carbon emissions from training would reduce. Hence, we recommend that ML papers include emissions explicitly to foster competition on more than just model quality. As estimates of emissions in papers that omitted them have been off 100x–100,000x, publishing emissions has the added benefit of ensuring accurate accounting. Given the importance of climate change, we must get the numbers right to make certain that we work on its biggest challenges.<br></p> </div> </div> </div>

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“…This means that digital firms are more likely to make investments to tackle the impact of climate change [2]. In fact, the results of several studies published on the subject indicate that digital technology itself has the potential to significantly reduce global emissions [3].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Digital Performance in EU Member States in the Context of the Transition to a Climate Neutral Economy

et al. 2022

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The climate-neutral economy is today, more than ever, the priority issue for all governmental and non-governmental bodies, directly and indirectly involved in the ambitious and responsible process of society’s transition to the green economy. To be or not to be sustainable today is no longer an option, but an urgent necessity. Based on these considerations, our research aims to add to the knowledge on the digital performance of the Member States in the context of the transition to a climate neutral economy, by analyzing the mutations that have occurred in the digital performance of the EU countries in the period 2015–2020, as well as forecasting developments for the year 2025. In order to obtain a relevant result, we used the components of the DESI index, published by the European Commission, and the variables were processed through hierarchical cluster analysis. The results demonstrate that, around the core formed in 2015 by four high digitally performing countries from the North of Europe in 2015, other countries have gradually clustered, so that in 2025 we estimate that a number of eight Member States will be part of the group of the most digitally performing countries. These countries are decisively committed to the transition towards a climate-neutral economy, their initiatives and examples of good practice can be taken up by all European and non-European countries pursuing the same objectives of sustainable development.

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The real climate and transformative impact of ICT: A critique of estimates, trends, and regulations

Cited by 204 publications

References 49 publications

Improved sustainability assessment of the G20’s supply chains of materials, fuels, and food

Improved sustainability assessment of the G20’s supply chains of materials, fuels, and food

The Carbon Footprint of Machine Learning Training Will Plateau, Then Shrink

Digital Performance in EU Member States in the Context of the Transition to a Climate Neutral Economy

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