Article 1

The Computer Age and Its Carbon Footprint

By JAMES KANTER

There is a sleek quality to so much modern technology, and that may make it hard to imagine its polluting potential. But think about it: Many of us in the developed world plug and unplug our cellphones, music players, printers and laptops from wall sockets several times a day. It turns out that these goods are responsible for a significant amount of the electricity that we use in homes and offices.
Behind these consumer products is the wider information and communications technology industry. To keep humming, this industry relies on vast volumes of powerful semiconductors and communications towers. The ICT industry also relies on vast data centers located at heavily protected and air conditioned sites across the globe.
A report released this week by the European Social Investment Forum, a Paris-based group that promotes sustainability in business, says the sector is responsible for about 2 percent of global carbon emissions — or about as much as from air transport.
That reinforces the views put forth in a report in The Economist early this month that emissions from data-centers and services over the Internet will have grown four-fold by 2020 making its carbon footprint even larger than that of aviation by some estimates.
The issue of growing emissions from the sector is an important one for banks that invest in high-growth technology companies, which might face added costs in the future because of regulations on carbon emissions and energy use. In its contribution to the Eurosif report, West LB, a German bank, said that the emissions from the industry created “a situation we consider to be unsustainable.”
West LB also said that the industry had managed to build up a “clean, non-polluting image that appeared to be free of environmental risks.” Only now was it “becoming clear that the sector’s footprint is significant.”
How many other industries are promoting a clean image that, on more critical examination, make a significant contribution to growth in energy use? And what more can be done to push them to account fully for their carbon footprints?