Actually, you wouldn’t necessarily associate digitalization and environmental protection with each other. Finally, digital data processing consumes large amounts of electricity, which in turn leads to significant greenhouse gas emissions. But some digital applications, including smart charging and building automation, also have high potential to reduce the burden on the environment, according to a new meta-study. However, this potential could quickly turn into the opposite, warn the researchers.
If you want to slow down climate change, you should plant trees, use less water and ride a bike more often instead of a car. But at the same time, our lives are also shaped by digital applications that are considered to be harmful to the climate, such as streaming and smartphones. The production and operation of digital devices alone account for up to four percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. One hour of streaming or social media consumes up to 280 grams of CO2. And a single AI training session can emit up to 942 tons of greenhouse gases – as much as 90 German citizens in a year.
Buildings, energy and transport benefit
But in some areas, digitalization could also actively contribute to environmental protection, as researchers from the Institute for Ecological Economic Research (IÖW) and the consulting company Technopolis have now discovered on behalf of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). In order to answer the question of whether digitalization helps or harms the environment, the team evaluated around 200 international studies from recent years. They determined for different digital applications whether they were beneficial or detrimental to environmental protection.
The result: There are currently no scientifically reliable figures in many areas, but researchers were able to identify positive effects of digitalization at least in buildings, the energy system and transport. For example, smart measurement and control technology that can be used to automate the heating of buildings offers the chance of lower heat and electricity consumption. The same applies to so-called “virtual power plants”, in which different forms of electricity generation are interconnected – for example photovoltaic systems and hydroelectric power plants. In both cases, digital technology maintains an overview of the big picture and thus makes the most efficient decisions.
Be careful about the opposite effects
“Smart charging” – the intelligent charging of electric vehicles – could also help to reduce emissions from fossil power plants in the long term by avoiding load peaks in the power grid and distributing the total output of the charging infrastructure in line with demand and electricity supply, as the researchers report. If artificial intelligence is also used to efficiently control routes and traffic light switching, this would probably also reduce the overall energy consumption of vehicles in Germany. “But the environmental effects of autonomous driving depend on whether the new technology also reduces the overall number of cars and the number of kilometers driven,” admits Christian Lautermann from the IÖW.
In general, the increased efficiency made possible by digital applications could quickly turn into the opposite. The researchers primarily fear so-called rebound effects. For example, if the production of a certain good becomes more efficient and energy-saving through digital networking, manufacturers could tend to increase production. The environmentally friendly savings would therefore be lost again. Lautermann therefore recommends: “Research should take the ecological footprint of digital technologies into account more than before and investigate undesirable side effects.” Only then can the benefits and risks of digitalization for the environment be truly assessed in a comprehensive manner.
Source: Institute for Ecological Economic Research (IÖW), Technopolis Germany; Meta-study
“Sustainability effects of digitalization” (PDF)