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The digital transformation of society is having a positive impact on the environment as less paper is being used, and less traveling is needed… or not? All that glitters is not gold and switching to a digital approach is not immune from drawbacks in terms of global sustainability: the ICT itself is responsible for a high percentage of the total carbon emissions, due for instance to the electricity it uses and the cooling systems it requires.

Cities account for two-thirds of the world’s overall energy consumption and contribute an estimated 70 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases. If just 100 of the world’s largest cities embarked on a low-carbon development path, global greenhouse gas emissions could be decreased by an estimated 10 percent a year.

On 20th October, ICT players attended the 2nd ICTFOOTPRINT.eu webinar, getting to know several ICT tools and services for energy management, which help them decreasing the energy consumption of ICT equipment. This allows lower costs in energy bills and even higher levels of ICT performance efficiency.  Jaak Vlasveld (Director of GreenIT Amsterdam) and Rabih Bashroush (Coordinator of Eureca project), are both energy experts with a wide experience on energy efficiency in ICT. They gave valuable pragmatic information about energy efficiency in ICT with high potential to benefit ICT players, without compromising the performance of their ICT equipment, especially in data centres.

Energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) sector are growing rapidly as a result of major economic and societal changes such as the uptake of network connected devices and the growth of online services. It is estimated that the ICT sector accounts for 8-10% of the European electricity consumption and up to 4% of its GHG emissions (European Commission).