347 Energy Consumed vs. Energy Saved by ICT – A Closer Look Vlad Coroama, Lorenz M. Hilty Technology and Society Lab Empa, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research Lerchenfeldstr. 5, CH-9014 St. Gallen vlad.coroama@empa.ch Abstract For quite some years now, there has been a growing debate under the label of “Green I(C)T” about reducing the energy consumption of ICT equipment. More recently, the discourse started to partly shift towards a novel discussion on using ICT to induce energy savings in sectors other than ICT. Advocates suggest that the cumulated potential for ICT-induced savings is several times larger than the entire energy consumption of ICT itself. Numerous studies on ICT-related energy consumption exist, and also an increasing number of studies looking at ICT-induced energy efficiency. The few studies, however, considering both aspects, typically do so independently, without relating the two aspects. Moreover, in the energy efficiency discourse, ICT is usually treated as a monolithic block of technologies – only the application areas that are expected to benefit from it being differentiated. In this paper, we make the case that ICT energy consumption and ICT’s potential for inducing energy efficiency can – and should – be related to each other. We further argue that this can only be obtained by decomposing the “ICT monolith” and look at its (naturally heterogeneous) parts separately. Based on a first round of expert interviews, we show that it is possible to qualitatively determine for every single technology subsumed under ICT its potential for inducing energy efficiency. We finally argue that only by consequently following low energy consumption targets for technologies with a low energy efficiency potential, while at the same time not suffocating technologies with a high energy efficiency potential through restrictive consumption targets, the full ICT-related energy saving potential can be unleashed. 1. Introduction Despite the fact that Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are responsible for only a small part of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions – current estimates attribute around 2% of man-made emissions to ICT (Mingay 2007; GeSI 2008) – this sector is the one with the fastest growing emissions. As a result, there is an increasing concern about the environmental impact of ICT, especially the climate change potential induced by ICT-related energy consumption. At the same time, there is a growing perception that ICT can also substantially reduce the environmen- tal impacts of other sectors, in particular by increasing their energy efficiency. Due to ICT, all economic sectors can become more energy efficient – since ICT allows existing processes to be optimized or enables entirely new, more energy-efficient processes. The energy that could be saved by ICT-induced energy ef- ficiency is estimated to be several times larger than the overall energy consumption of ICT itself (GeSI 2008). The European Commission recognizes this potential and hopes that Europe will achieve its target of 20% greenhouse gas reduction by 2020 to a relevant degree through the deployment of ICT. In this paper, we summarize the results from a recent study (Hilty, Coroama et al. 2009), which looked at these two main issues at the intersection between ICT and energy: ICT’s own energy consumption and ICT’s potential to induce energy efficiency across the economy. We make the case that, unlike most exist- EnviroInfo 2009 (Berlin) Environmental Informatics and Industrial Environmental Protection: Concepts, Methods and Tools Copyright © Shaker Verlag 2009. ISBN: 978-3-8322-8397-1