Report

Environmental Sustainability and the Digital Revolution: A Systematic Review of the ICT and its Environmental Impact

Henrik Andersson, and Bruno Jullien

Abstract

This report provides an overview and discussion of the current knowledge of the information and communications technology (ICT) sector’s effect on global warming, and policies to address this effect. A systematic literature review is conducted that shows that much focus in the literature has been on data centers, the amount of data processed, and the resulting green house gas emissions. The review also shows recent research on data services and traffic (e.g. video streaming), but limited research into how economic policies can mitigate the environmental impacts from data usage.

Keywords

Data centers; Global warming; Green house gas emissions; Information and communications technology; Streaming; Telecommunication networks;

Reference

Henrik Andersson, and Bruno Jullien, Environmental Sustainability and the Digital Revolution: A Systematic Review of the ICT and its Environmental Impact, June 2023.

See also

Published in

June 2023