With the publication of its report High Tech: Low Carbon last month, IntellectUK adds to calls for more acknowledgement of ICT’s role in the fight against climate change. Sheridan Nye, who attended the launch conference in London, writes about how the technology trade organisation is making more than a self-interested demand for recognition: as the report says, immediate action is needed to achieve the necessary inflection in the global emissions curve (1) and ICT technologies could make a crucial difference.

IntellectUK represents large vendors with interests in the UK such as Ericsson, Cisco, Fujitsu, Sharp, Samsung and Motorola and the report emphasises the significant gains already made in equipment energy consumption. Mobile phones and home entertainment equipment are steadily becoming more energy efficient; and improved design and configuration of data centres promises to address one of the industry’s biggest energy drains. Throughout the industry, sophisticated analysis is being applied to the lifecycle of products from manufacture to in-use and major firms have committed to labelling initiatives and standards.

Shifting the focus

However, IntellectUK claims such advances are overlooked, noting the media’s fixation with the highly visible ‘standby button’ issue (2) despite dramatic improvements in recent years. As a consequence, disproportionate attention is paid to the sector’s direct appetite for energy at the expense of its positive contributions in other sectors, such as transport, building design and product dematerialisation. These opportunities span three categories where gains could be made: enhancing technologies that improve the efficiency of existing activities; enabling technologies that support evolutionary change; and transforming technologies that fundamentally change the way things are done.

This ability of ICT to impact consumption across sectors challenges a basic premise of carbon pricing – that producers should pay for the volume of their emissions. IntellectUK backs the CBI’s Task Force on Climate Change in recommending transparent carbon accountability that shortens time to ROI. It adds that carbon pricing should accommodate cross-sector energy efficiency by offsetting ICT technologies that make a larger positive contribution in their sector of use. This is crucial for ICT players, who will otherwise end up carrying the can for increases in their footprints whilst they save CO2 emissions in other sectors.

Difficult questions

IntellectUK expects the sector to exceed the target set by the Task Force of a 30% improvement in the efficiency of electrical equipment by 2030. However, it also concedes that considerable uncertainty exists regarding the more systemic impact of technology on behaviour and the benefits of energy saving initiatives that require short-term energy increases in return for longer-term gains. The sector’s initial focus is therefore to reduce direct energy costs and total cost of ownership for itself and for its customers. IntellectUK’s report includes a selection of case studies that illustrate emerging best practice and innovation.

Nonetheless, critics will inevitably focus on the estimated 2% of global CO2 emissions caused by ICT products and services (3) and question the validity of growth models based on increasing device sales. In its report IntellectUK acknowledges that the sector’s energy efficiency initiatives must “…outweigh the kind of rapid growth and increasing proliferation that we have seen over the past decade and which looks set to continue.” (4) ‘Proliferation’ in this context means sales of ever increasing numbers of devices – mobile phones, TVs, games consoles, network and office equipment, etc.

Unsurprisingly, the report takes the need for such growth as given, yet climate change presents the ICT sector with many challenges, including the need to discuss difficult questions such as ‘proliferation’ more openly. We suggest some key questions that perhaps should be acknowledged if the ICT sector is to maintain and enhance its credibility in the climate change debate: 

• Is the promotion of new electronic devices and brand models driving unsustainable demand? 
• How can product lifecycles be substantially extended?
• Can the basis for revenue growth shift from innovation in hardwar to software?
• Can energy efficient server technology be priced for the lower-end market where volume demand is greatest? (5)
• ICT use its marketing expertise to make environmental concern more ‘cool’ to consumers?

IntellectUK has launched a new research programme with the University of Warwick that will explore the behavioural issues underlying the rapid ‘upgrade cycle’, among other issues such as the sector’s approach to monitoring of emissions. This initiative points in the right direction. Without frank discussion of the more intractable issues, the industry may undermine appreciation of its wider role, as these questions are unlikely to fade from public debate.

High Tech: Low Carbon – the role of technology in tackling climate change is available from IntellectUK’s website:

http://www.intellectuk.org/hightechlowcarbon

References:

1: A Cost Curve for Greenhouse Gas Reduction (2007) The McKinsey Quarterly, 2007, No. 1

2: BNXS36 Estimated UK standby electricity consumption in 2006, published by the UK government’s Market Transformation Programme, estimates standby power consumption at around 7.2TWh

3: Gartner Symposium/IT Expo, 26 April 2007 http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=503867

4: High Tech: Low Carbon, pp.5

5  Koomey, J.G, Estimating total power consumption by servers in the US and the world, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, February 15, 2007