The Ecological Transition Agency and the telecoms policeman have looked into the ecological balance sheet of digital technology in France. If we could expect worse, great efforts are still to be made.
2.5%. This is, according to the latest study conducted by Ademe and Arcep, the share represented by digital technology in the French carbon footprint. At the request of the government, the Ecological Transition Agency and the telecoms regulator sought to quantify the impact of digital technology on the country’s carbon footprint, and the result turned out to be lower than expected. Indeed, organizations such as The Shift Project estimate that globally, the share of digital in greenhouse gas emissions is around 4%.
Lots of imported shows
Unsurprisingly, Ademe insists on two important points: although insufficient, this assessment is the result of a highly developed nuclear fleet in France, providing carbon-free energy; also, a good part of the emissions are said to be “imported”, linked to the manufacture of our devices abroad, which represents 79% of the CO2 emitted.
This study also reminds us that the manufacture of our electronic devices requires enormous quantities of non-renewable resources. Organizations speak of some 200 kg of material to design a smartphone, and it’s even worse for screens. The larger a television, the more catastrophic its balance sheet is at this level.
In this context, we understand why Ademe is making the extension of the lifespan of devices a primordial combat. This is also the observation made by The Shift Project which, to achieve digital sobriety and limit its greenhouse gas emissions, recommends increasing the use of refurbished products and doing everything possible to extend their use (access extended to spare parts, software support obligation over time, etc.).
The impact of data centers and networks
In their report, Ademe and Arcep do not forget, either, the changes in use related to digital technology and the fact that – more and more – calculations and storage are deported to ever larger datacenters. , powerful and energy-consuming. We are in the era of the cloud and streaming, and these data centers represent between 4 and 20% of the environmental impact of digital, depending on their location and the type of energy that powers them.
The construction of these infrastructures as well as the manufacture of the equipment installed there, however, constitute a non-negligible and difficult to reduce part of their environmental balance.
Finally, to finish on uses, Arcep indicates that telecom networks are only responsible for 5 to 10% of the total emissions allocated to the digital sector, with in particular 5G networks that consume less energy than those of the previous generation. According to the president of the organization, Laure de la Raudière, even taking into account an increase of around 30% in the use of mobile networks, 5G retains an ecological interest.
The latter nevertheless specifies that many efforts can be made to reduce the overall ecological bill for digital technology. Among the most effective tracks, the reduction of the quality of the streams of the main online video platforms, at the origin of a huge part of the Internet traffic. The usefulness of 4K on a smartphone screen still remains to be demonstrated…