Abstract
Sustainability requires ongoing reform of resource production and consumption to reduce environmental harms. The main way that Information and Communication Technology (ICT) can address these resource impacts is through digital optimization. Spreng found that optimization of an industrial process either increases energy use or accelerates production or consumption. It was assumed that reducing energy use progresses sustainability, whilst accelerating production or consumption to meet market demand is consumerist and generally detrimental to sustainability. In this paper, we argue that there are two important cases in which accelerating economic processes actually has an essential role in enabling sustainability by ICT: (1) when the process drives the production and adoption of an environmentally beneficial product such as a solar panel, often referred to as “cleantech”, or (2) when the process being increased is specific to the Circular Economy, such as recycling, maintenance/refurbishment, and sharing/reuse e.g., car-sharing, ride-sharing and tool-sharing in the Sharing Economy. The opportunities for ICT4S optimization are thus threefold: not just saving resources with efficiency, but also pushing the adoption of cleantech, and pushing the circulation of resources.
Highlights
The rapid development of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) alongside looming environmental risks has spurred interest in using Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for sustainability
This paper has argued that pushing cleantech and circularity are important ways by which ICT can progress sustainability
As these push impacts feature heavily in ICT4S praxis they should be integrated into strategic conceptualizations of the field
Summary
The rapid development of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) alongside looming environmental risks has spurred interest in using ICT for sustainability. Smart thermostats such as Google Nest can heat homes more efficiently, whilst ride-sharing platforms such as BlaBlaCar can find passengers to fill empty car seats Such systems have been termed “Sustainability by ICT” by the field of ICT for Sustainability (ICT4S) [1], and “smart green” [2] or “cleanweb” [3,4] within industry and entrepreneurship, amongst other designations. Hilty and Aebischer describe Sustainability by ICT as “the transformational power of [ICT] to develop more sustainable patterns of production and consumption” [1] Their LES Model divides the environmental impacts of ICT into three levels, with the top two describing Sustainability by ICT (Figure 1). We view all actions as processes of production or consumption” [1]
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