What are digital carbon footprints?
CARBON FOOTPRINTS
According to NORA, there were 15 billion-dollar climate disasters in the first nine months of 2022 alone. Billion dollar disasters such as these have increased in frequency from an average of one per 82 days going back to the 1980, to just 18 days.
As a result, many of us have become much more climate change aware. We also realise that certain aspects of our lives—such as our choice of travel, what we eat, and how we heat our homes—have an impact on the climate.
This impact is known as our “carbon footprint” and represents the amount of carbon dioxide, and equivalent gases, that our activities contribute to the atmosphere.
Spurred on by increasing regularity of climate disasters, public policy, global conventions and grass-roots awareness that a plethora of smartphone apps have created, our collective awareness of carbon footprints has grown higher than ever before, and is increasing.
However, there is one very significant area of our lives that is only just beginning to be talked about – this is the carbon emission associated with our digital lifestyles.
DIGITAL CARBON FOOTPRINTS
When we talk about Carbon Dioxide (CO2) emissions, we generally include other gases that contribute to warming such as methane, nitrous oxide and many others. We collectively refer to these as Carbon Dioxide Equivalents, or CO2e.
Digital carbon footprints encapsulate CO2e emissions attributable to the digital products and services that we find ourselves so dependent on in our modern lives.
The almost intangible nature of services like email, electronic billing or electronic signatures lures us into thinking that the carbon footprint of these is inconsequential in comparison to physical activities like paper documents and letters.
Indeed, conducting client meetings via phone and video calls likely generates less CO2e emissions than hopping in a conventional car and driving to meeting after meeting.
It is important, however, to realise that the total emissions of our digital dependency is not inconsequential, nor as little as one might expect. Fundamentally, digital is not carbon-free, and everything from asset tracking tags to mobile phones, racks of computer servers, video conference calls and “smart” things have footprints.
Stem a leak before the flood
British author Winston Graham once wrote about how neglecting a trickle of water escaping from a dam can rapidly turn into a flood that washes you away. Neglecting our digital carbon footprint is indeed akin to neglecting a leaky dam.
The unique challenge with our digital carbon footprints is that our use of and dependency on digital isn’t stable, or growing slowly, it is growing exponentially. That exponential growth was exaggerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, ushering in greater use of, and dependency on digital solutions including documentation management, data storage, and online meetings.
Thomson Reuters’ 2022 Legal Department Operations Index report indicated that technology adoption within law departments is also on the rise. 71% of respondents stated that increasing the use of technology within their departments to simplify workflows and processes was a high priority.
Going back to our dam analogy, this is like a dam that doubles in size every year. The longer you wait to fix the leak, the bigger the catastrophe when it breaks.
Combined, the ongoing rapid digital transformation and our false assumption that digital is carbon free is resulting in a digital carbon footprint that is accelerating and shows no signs of abating.
Defining the size of our digital carbon footprint
Quantifying the exact size of our collective digital carbon footprint is a topic of ongoing research.
Yet, current estimates put the total carbon emissions of the internet at a whopping 1.7 billion tonnes of CO2e in 2020.
To put that in context, the combined CO2e emissions of the 27 EU nations in 2020 was 2.6 billion tonnes, India accounted for 2.44 billion, and Russia contributed 1.58 billion tonnes.
Will energy grid decarbonisation help?
In short, yes, but …
25% of global carbon emissions come from electricity generation and the internet uses a great deal of electricity – exactly how much of that 25% is used by the Internet is itself an ongoing research topic.
However, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) sixth report points us in a direction, citing that the combined electricity use of consumer devices, data centres and networks accounts for 6% to 12% of total global energy use.
“Quantitative estimates vary widely, with literature values suggesting that consumer devices, data centres, and data networks account for anywhere from 6% to 12% of global electricity use.”
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The IPCC’s range is quite broad, but other estimates put it as high as 20%, or as low as 3%. Again, putting that into context – even at the lowest estimate that would make the internet the 3rd largest energy consumer behind the USA, and just ahead of India.
As shocking as this might be, there is a glimmer of hope.
The internet industry is one of the more advanced on the road to decarbonisation; moving from fossil-fuel based energy to renewable sources.
However, we can’t simply sit back and wait for decarbonisation plans to be delivered and hope that results in greener digital services.
While the IPCC’s estimate of the internet energy consumption encapsulates a wide proportion of our digital lives, it is not complete. Digital technologies can and do exist beyond the definitions of the internet.
For example, our digital lives and carbon footprint extend to TVs, set top boxes, printers, portable hard drives, USB cables…yes, USB cables, let’s get on to that…
The Pareto principle goes digital
The Pareto principle, also known as the 80/20 rule, is at work in digital carbon footprints, too.
Digital carbon footprints comprise of both, the carbon created by the energy consumed when using digital technologies, as well as the carbon that is baked-in, or embodied in the devices, services and accessories long before we even touch them.
Approximately 80% of a product’s lifetime carbon footprint is embodied within the device itself. This includes the CO2e generated during manufacture, storage, and transportation.
Coming back to the USB cable mentioned above, when you buy a new smartphone that requires a USB cable for charging, the cable’s CO2e emissions (as well as the charger and packaging) are part of the smartphone’s overall embodied carbon footprint.
This leads to a simple revelation – the biggest single thing we can do to cut our digital carbon footprint is buy less and extend the usable lifetime of the things we already have.
The remaining 20% comes from the energy required to use the product or service in its lifetime.
While this 20% may seem like a worthless distraction in the face of the hefty 80%, as our usage of digital technology continues to accelerate over time a continuous growth of unconscious wasted energy consumption could swing the balance.
HOW TO REDUCE YOUR DIGITAL CARBON FOOTPRINT
“Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.”
Vincent Van Gogh
On an individual basis, our digital carbon footprints consist of a few large, carbon-intensive elements and many smaller, incremental factors. Our challenge is to become more aware of the fact that digital is not carbon free, then to make changes in our habits to avoid unnecessary wasted energy use.
Some of these changes are both easy to make and collectively impactful.
At an industry, organisational or enterprise level, we have the potential to make changes whose effect multiplies across our communities to give significant scale.
[1] www.bbc.com/future/article/20200305-why-your-internet-habits-are-not-as-clean-as-you-think
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-country (data shown converted from tons to tonnes)
[1] https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions#electricity
[1] https://report.ipcc.ch/ar6wg3/pdf/IPCC_AR6_WGIII_FinalDraft_FullReport.pdf
CARBON FOOTPRINTS
According to NORA, there were 15 billion-dollar climate disasters in the first nine months of 2022 alone. Billion dollar disasters such as these have increased in frequency from an average of one per 82 days going back to the 1980, to just 18 days.
As a result, many of us have become much more climate change aware. We also realise that certain aspects of our lives—such as our choice of travel, what we eat, and how we heat our homes—have an impact on the climate.
This impact is known as our “carbon footprint” and represents the amount of carbon dioxide, and equivalent gases, that our activities contribute to the atmosphere.
Spurred on by increasing regularity of climate disasters, public policy, global conventions and grass-roots awareness that a plethora of smartphone apps have created, our collective awareness of carbon footprints has grown higher than ever before, and is increasing.
However, there is one very significant area of our lives that is only just beginning to be talked about – this is the carbon emission associated with our digital lifestyles.
DIGITAL CARBON FOOTPRINTS
When we talk about Carbon Dioxide (CO2) emissions, we generally include other gases that contribute to warming such as methane, nitrous oxide and many others. We collectively refer to these as Carbon Dioxide Equivalents, or CO2e.
Digital carbon footprints encapsulate CO2e emissions attributable to the digital products and services that we find ourselves so dependent on in our modern lives.
The almost intangible nature of services like email, electronic billing or electronic signatures lures us into thinking that the carbon footprint of these is inconsequential in comparison to physical activities like paper documents and letters.
Indeed, conducting client meetings via phone and video calls likely generates less CO2e emissions than hopping in a conventional car and driving to meeting after meeting.
It is important, however, to realise that the total emissions of our digital dependency is not inconsequential, nor as little as one might expect. Fundamentally, digital is not carbon-free, and everything from asset tracking tags to mobile phones, racks of computer servers, video conference calls and “smart” things have footprints.
Stem a leak before the flood
British author Winston Graham once wrote about how neglecting a trickle of water escaping from a dam can rapidly turn into a flood that washes you away. Neglecting our digital carbon footprint is indeed akin to neglecting a leaky dam.
The unique challenge with our digital carbon footprints is that our use of and dependency on digital isn’t stable, or growing slowly, it is growing exponentially. That exponential growth was exaggerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, ushering in greater use of, and dependency on digital solutions including documentation management, data storage, and online meetings.
Thomson Reuters’ 2022 Legal Department Operations Index report indicated that technology adoption within law departments is also on the rise. 71% of respondents stated that increasing the use of technology within their departments to simplify workflows and processes was a high priority.
Going back to our dam analogy, this is like a dam that doubles in size every year. The longer you wait to fix the leak, the bigger the catastrophe when it breaks.
Combined, the ongoing rapid digital transformation and our false assumption that digital is carbon free is resulting in a digital carbon footprint that is accelerating and shows no signs of abating.
Defining the size of our digital carbon footprint
Quantifying the exact size of our collective digital carbon footprint is a topic of ongoing research.
Yet, current estimates put the total carbon emissions of the internet at a whopping 1.7 billion tonnes of CO2e in 2020.
To put that in context, the combined CO2e emissions of the 27 EU nations in 2020 was 2.6 billion tonnes, India accounted for 2.44 billion, and Russia contributed 1.58 billion tonnes.
Will energy grid decarbonisation help?
In short, yes, but …
25% of global carbon emissions come from electricity generation and the internet uses a great deal of electricity – exactly how much of that 25% is used by the Internet is itself an ongoing research topic.
However, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) sixth report points us in a direction, citing that the combined electricity use of consumer devices, data centres and networks accounts for 6% to 12% of total global energy use.
“Quantitative estimates vary widely, with literature values suggesting that consumer devices, data centres, and data networks account for anywhere from 6% to 12% of global electricity use.”
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The IPCC’s range is quite broad, but other estimates put it as high as 20%, or as low as 3%. Again, putting that into context – even at the lowest estimate that would make the internet the 3rd largest energy consumer behind the USA, and just ahead of India.
As shocking as this might be, there is a glimmer of hope.
The internet industry is one of the more advanced on the road to decarbonisation; moving from fossil-fuel based energy to renewable sources.
However, we can’t simply sit back and wait for decarbonisation plans to be delivered and hope that results in greener digital services.
While the IPCC’s estimate of the internet energy consumption encapsulates a wide proportion of our digital lives, it is not complete. Digital technologies can and do exist beyond the definitions of the internet.
For example, our digital lives and carbon footprint extend to TVs, set top boxes, printers, portable hard drives, USB cables…yes, USB cables, let’s get on to that…
The Pareto principle goes digital
The Pareto principle, also known as the 80/20 rule, is at work in digital carbon footprints, too.
Digital carbon footprints comprise of both, the carbon created by the energy consumed when using digital technologies, as well as the carbon that is baked-in, or embodied in the devices, services and accessories long before we even touch them.
Approximately 80% of a product’s lifetime carbon footprint is embodied within the device itself. This includes the CO2e generated during manufacture, storage, and transportation.
Coming back to the USB cable mentioned above, when you buy a new smartphone that requires a USB cable for charging, the cable’s CO2e emissions (as well as the charger and packaging) are part of the smartphone’s overall embodied carbon footprint.
This leads to a simple revelation – the biggest single thing we can do to cut our digital carbon footprint is buy less and extend the usable lifetime of the things we already have.
The remaining 20% comes from the energy required to use the product or service in its lifetime.
While this 20% may seem like a worthless distraction in the face of the hefty 80%, as our usage of digital technology continues to accelerate over time a continuous growth of unconscious wasted energy consumption could swing the balance.
HOW TO REDUCE YOUR DIGITAL CARBON FOOTPRINT
“Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.”
Vincent Van Gogh
On an individual basis, our digital carbon footprints consist of a few large, carbon-intensive elements and many smaller, incremental factors. Our challenge is to become more aware of the fact that digital is not carbon free, then to make changes in our habits to avoid unnecessary wasted energy use.
Some of these changes are both easy to make and collectively impactful.
At an industry, organisational or enterprise level, we have the potential to make changes whose effect multiplies across our communities to give significant scale.
