Assessing embodied carbon emissions of communication user devices by combining approaches

Abstract

The use of information and communication technologies are increasing in society. Carbon emissions can be found throughout the entire life cycle of access networks, data centers and communication user devices. The focus of this study is the embodied carbon emissions of user devices associated with accessing networks, hence tablets, smartphones and feature phones, laptop and desktop PCs, PC displays and customer premises equipment (CPEs). The purpose is to investigate the embodied carbon emissions by applying different approaches: i) the commonly used approach where estimated product carbon emissions are scaled up by shipments, ii) allocation of the electronic sector companies’ reported data combined with materials data for the products, and iii) the upstream carbon emissions reported by user device vendors (final manufacturers). Despite its sensitivity to allocation the second approach is considered to give the most reasonable overall result of about 180 million tonnes carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2e) related to chosen user device types and shipments in 2020. Underreporting of scope 3 in the data sources of the vendors, and sensitivity to specific product data sets with very high display values are two major concerns of the other approaches. Representative embodied emissions for user devices are derived for 2020: 50 kg CO2e for a smartphone, 20 kg CO2e for a feature phone, 100 kg CO2e for a tablet, 200 kg CO2e for a laptop, 350 kg CO2e for a desktop PC, 100 kg CO2e for a PC display and 30 kg CO2e for a CPE.