A 360 degree carbon audit of the ICT industry

Abstract

Computing and communications have altered the way in which the world works and lives today. Captured within a single acronym, ‘ICT’ has majorly shaped the growth and sustenance of every other industry in this planet. But growth invariably comes with a price. The high energy consumption of the ICT industry and its attendant environmental fallouts threatens to undo the positives that the industry is otherwise associated with. This paper does a 360 degree Carbon Audit of the ICT Industry. The tool used for the audit is the Bow-Tie Diagram, a risk evaluation tool. The paper does a threat-consequence mapping of the increasing carbon footprint of the ICT industry. Five threats and three consequences are identified. Then using literature survey, the paper delineates twenty five barriers that can help in containing the carbon footprint of the ICT industry. Seventeen of the 25 identified barriers are on the threat side and the remaining eight are on the consequences side of the Bow-Tie.