Abstract
This article presents estimations of the energy and carbon footprint of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and Entertainment & Media (E&M) sectors globally for 2010–2015 including a forecast to 2020. It builds on three previous global studies (2007, 2011, and 2018) and a Swedish study (2015) by the same authors. The study is based on an extensive dataset which combines primary and secondary data for operational (use stage) energy consumption and life cycle greenhouse gas emissions (CO2e) for the included sub-sectors, including energy and carbon footprint data from about 100 of the major global manufacturers, operators, and ICT and E&M service providers. The data set also includes sales statistics and forecasts for equipment to estimate product volumes in addition to published LCA studies and primary manufacturing data to estimate the embodied carbon footprint of products. The result shows that the ICT and E&M sectors have turned their previously growing footprints into shrinking ones despite a continuous increase in subscriptions and data traffic. Furthermore, the results of this study are also indicating that these footprints are significantly smaller than previously forecasted.
Highlights
The term carbon footprint is a well-established concept commonly understood as the life cycle carbon equivalent emissions and effects related to a product or service
This study is the fourth global study by Malmodin and Lundén following a study that estimated the global carbon footprints of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and Entertainment & Media (E&M) sectors in 2007, published in 2010 [2], a similar study estimating the footprints in 2011 including forecasts to 2020, published in 2013 [3], and an initial paper on the energy and carbon footprint of the global ICT and E&M sectors 2010–2015 [4] presented at the ICT4S 2018 conference in Toronto
The starting point for this study was the question whether the same trends as in the Swedish study could be seen at a global scale or not? Had the aggregated annual global energy and carbon footprints of the ICT and E&M sectors peaked and started to decrease globally as the German and US studies indicates?
Summary
The term carbon footprint is a well-established concept commonly understood as the life cycle carbon equivalent emissions and effects related to a product or service. In several articles and papers [5,6,7,8], the assumed growth of the ICT footprint is described as a high and increasing, mostly based on the assumption that the ICT sector’s carbon and energy footprints are growing fast and in line with the exponential data traffic increase The starting point for this study was the question whether the same trends as in the Swedish study could be seen at a global scale or not? Had the aggregated annual global energy and carbon footprints of the ICT and E&M sectors peaked and started to decrease globally as the German and US studies indicates?
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