The direct energy footprint of digital technology is growing rapidly: 9% per year.
"Today's digital technology is not adapted to tomorrow's world, to its uncertainties, to its limited resources. A decisive issue for society as a whole is that digital technology must move away from the "always more" approach and integrate long-term perspectives with society's stakeholders and future generations," observed the Fing in "What kind of digital technology do we want for tomorrow?"The reduction of GHG emissions from the digital sector involves decarbonizing the energy consumed for the production of equipment and the operation of networks, optimizing the energy needs of infrastructures (networks, data centers, etc.) and sobriety (extending the lifespan of equipment, recycling circuits, reparability).
However, the energy efficiency made possible by new technologies could be offset by the increase in consumption caused by new uses: this is the "rebound effect".
A recent increase in public awareness has led to a kind of reversal in the perception of the role that digital technology can play for the environment: only 38% of French people, who feel poorly informed about this issue, see this sector as an opportunity for the environment, whereas 56% of them thought so in 2008.
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France Stratégie: Growing energy consumption that must be controlled
France stratégie has undertaken to evaluate the impact of digital uses on energy consumption .With the double phenomenon of an increase in the number of Internet users and the explosion of mobile uses, the digital sector is experiencing a golden age which is reflected in the exponential growth of the number of devices connected to the Internet and the explosion of IP traffic in telecom networks and data centers.
"While the growth in digital consumption is driven by all of its segments - terminal equipment, telecom networks, data centers and production of said equipment and infrastructure - production has been in recent years and will remain by 2025 the main consumption item in digital: it represents 45% of the sector's total consumption and this share is expected to remain around 40% by 2025. "The energy growth of digital is particularly strong compared to the growth of global energy consumption across all sectors: in 2017, digital accounted for about 2.7% of global final energy consumption at the global level and is expected to account for between 4.7% and 6% in 2025, almost doubling from 2017.""Faced with these challenges, the traditional response to the problems associated with the growing energy consumption of digital technology has relied and still relies primarily on energy gains linked to technological progress.""Technological progress in large digital infrastructures - telecom networks and data centers - allows real unit energy gains.""Nevertheless, the inefficiencies that persist in the management of infrastructures (in particular the existence of several generations of telecoms networks in parallel and the non-optimization of the rate of use of equipment in data centers) and above all the increase in uses and ultimately in Internet traffic, do not make it possible to control overall consumption. Moreover," say the experts at France Stratégie, " this lever does not affect energy consumption linked to the production of equipment and therefore leaves out a major item of digital consumptionRéférence :
.Crypto-currencies and the internet of things raise strong energy fears
Crypto-currencies based on public blockchains are, according to France Stratégie experts, "a driver of growth in digital energy consumption, but to date still represent a small share of total consumption: between 60 and 200 TWh in 2018. This consumption is, however, often perceived as 'inefficient' in light of the current social utility of crypto-currencies and could be drastically reduced if proof-of-participation systems were favored.""The energy consumption of the Internet of Things is still poorly studied. However, we know that IoT devices are expected to grow the most in consumption by 2030. This growth should be driven mainly by the consumption of the tens of billions of objects expected, while the additional consumption they induce upstream in telecom networks and data centers should remain low. Consumption related to production, which is likely to be high, is not documented at this stage. In the end, the addition of a connection function to a multitude of objects should have an impact on the evolution of the global digital consumption and the consumption of this new digital segment should therefore be studied.Référence :
Less than one in three French people feel well informed about the impact of digital technology on the environment
73% of French people believe that the development of digital equipment has a significant impact on the environment (73%), 63% for connected objects (63%), according to a survey conducted by the BVA / Digital Society Forum Observatory.The French still have a poor perception of the links between digital technology and the environment. "This is due to a real lack of information and awareness", note the authors of this survey. 27% of respondents feel well informed about the impact of digital technology on the environment
"When asked about the links between digital and the environment, respondents mention both positive elements (saving paper and preserving forests, promoting ecology) and negative ones (pollution, energy consumption)."The French people surveyed have a hard time deciding on the impact of digital technology on the energy transition: 24% see it as a lever, 18% see it as a brake and 27% say they do not know...
"Similarly, they are very divided on the effectiveness of digital tools to encourage the adoption of eco-responsible practices: 41% consider them effective and 39% not effective."Références :
